


Shards of Spirit

by ShatteredSwallowtail



Category: Bleach
Genre: Drama & Romance, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-11 11:30:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20545439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShatteredSwallowtail/pseuds/ShatteredSwallowtail
Summary: Do we ever get a second chance? An option to redo what we did wrong? And if we did, would we know what to do when it was given to us? When a mistake threatens to cost Ichigo the thing he never realized was most important, how far will he go to get it back?Gravely injured, hovering at the brink of death, Rukia remains trapped within her mind, a prisoner to her own inner demons, while Ichigo, determined to restore her, faces not only her own darkness but the fears and illusions in his own heart by journeying into her mind itself to find her and bring the pieces of her soul back together.Note - This was began long before they did the shinigami untold tales arc so the version of Sode no Shirayuki in this story is my own version of her.





	1. Mirror to Oblivion

Sandaled feet impacted tile with a thump, pushing off again into a long stride that somehow lacked the usual grace with which the owner of said foot usually moved. Airborne again, arms tightened further around the smaller form clutched so tightly to his chest, eyes flickering back and forth from the path ahead over the rooftops to the still body and the blood that he could feel seeping through heavy fabric. Ichigo's jaw tensed as teeth ground together, ruthlessly crushing nerves that threatened to flutter up and interfere. No, right now was not the time for worry, or the time to be thinking about all the bad possibilities that could happen. He could do that later. Or... he could yell at her later over the fact that he'd even _had_ to worry in the first place, and then yell at her some more about all the things that _could_ have happened. Because they weren't going to happen. Not now, now if he had anything to say about it. Which he was relatively certain he did. And if someone tried to say different... well, he'd worry about that then.

Sparing another glance down at the unconscious girl, he mentally kicked himself yet again for having been so stupid. He'd let this happen, he'd failed to protect her yet again. Just like that first abortive fight with Grimmjow, it was the same all over again. Watching helplessly, like an impotent fool, as she took the hit that by all rights should have been his. Stifling a growl as he pushed off yet another rooftop, Ichigo mentally calculated the distance to Urahara's. He could make it. He had to.

_Rukia... I'm such a fucking idiot... why the hell didn't you get out of the damned way?!_

It was really pointless to be blaming _her_, as much as he hated to admit it -- she was always convinced that everything was his fault, why should he waste the chance to give back the same -- because his conscience -- damn the infernal thing, getting in the way -- wouldn't let him slink away from the fact that, regardless of the number of times she shoved him away and beat on him and declared in that haughty manner of hers that she needed exactly zero degrees of aid from him, he was supposed to protect her. Was _going_ to protect her. Just like he'd promised.

Nothing was supposed to happen this way. Not her blood that he could -- with an even more worried countenance -- feel dripping slowly down his arm to his elbow, sleeve already sticky and damp where the crimson fluid that held her life was soaking into the material. Not the deathly still and pale way she lay in his arms, looking so small, so frail, so _different_ from the strong indomitable Rukia he knew. But things didn't always go the way you'd planned them to, that little sarcastic portion of the back of his mind commented snidely. Ichigo hated that portion of his brain, he wanted to rip it free and make it suffer, make it beg for mercy and then deny it that. Maybe then it would assuage the sick, sinking feeling that was rapidly pooling in his gut.

But even moreso than the situation, it was the Hollow's last words that were haunting him. They had rung with an eerie weight to them, an indefinable _something_ sending little chills crawling up his spine even as he'd watched Zangetsu's blade cleave the bloodied mask in two, heard the ear-splitting screech as the creature surrendered it's hold on life and faded into the souls it had once been.

_"You think you've won, shinigami? You're too late. You may heal her wounds... but you've still lost her in the end. Just wait and see..."_

Ichigo hadn't bothered with trying to figure out what the words meant, there hadn't been time. Hell, there hadn't even been enough time for him to properly figure out exactly what had happened. It had been a simple hunt, normal, every-day. They'd squared off against it together, even though he'd snarled that he could handle it and she'd snapped back that she wasn't about to let her own skills go to waste because he needed to prove the size of his equipment. But then, she'd frozen. Violet eyes widening, hands tightening on her zanpakutou's hilt, knuckles whitening as a tremor had crept into her frame. He'd never seen her tremble, not once that he could remember, but rather then taking the time to ponder it, he'd snarled something scathing and dispatched the thing himself. At least that had shut it up, whatever it was saying to her. Something about how she'd share the same fate as Kaien.

He had no idea what or who "Kaien" was, but obviously Rukia did, given her reaction. He'd made a mental note -- amidst rounding on her and snarling at her about standing there like an idiot and being useless -- to ask her about it later. Of course, that had been cut off by her foot meeting his shin as she yelled back at him and things quickly devolved into one of their usual screaming matches. Until... the flare of reiatsu had been the only warning, the only flicker of thought that anything was wrong. And then the Hollow had come, so sudden and stealthily that he'd had no time to react, could only watch in horror as the hole ripped open in the air behind her, and the clawed, spiked arm shot out, punching cleanly through her right shoulder and upper chest.

He'd reached for Zangetsu as her eyes widened in shocked horror as she was lifted up and tossed aside like a ragdoll to land in a bloody heap on the pavement, vermilion rapidly pooling beneath her. That was when reason had left the building and he honestly didn't remember much of what happened next, only that the Hollow was much worse off and nearly dead within a matter of seconds as he'd felt the energy of his bankai sweep over him -- never mind that something like this was really not even worth that much power, it felt good -- and something in him had almost wanted to gloat as he'd leveled the killing blow, barely heeding the words it hissed from bloodied teeth. At least... he hadn't heeded them at first. Now they seemed almost like a death knell.

Shifting Rukia in his arms, his eyes unerringly picked out the destined roof, only a few hundred yards away, and he picked up the pace, knowing full well they were leaving a trail of blood behind them. Skidding to a stop, he all levied a foot against the door, kicking it open and hollering for some help. If he was lucky, there was a pair of geta and a striped hat nearby. Or at least Yoruichi, she could probably be helpful. She'd helped Inoue, after all, when she'd been so injured by Yammy and Ulquiorra.

His prayers -- if they could really be called that -- were blessedly answered by the near-immediate appearance of not one but both of them, liberating Rukia from his arms in a heartbeat while Tessai all but tackled him to the ground to ensure the blood coating his torso wasn't in any way his. And then time seemed to slow down, or at least it did in Ichigo's mind, the seconds ticking by so indeterminably long, each one like an hour as he stood there, roiling in his own helplessness, fists clenched by his side. There was nothing, nothing at all that he could do. Just wait.

Brown eyes barely registered when Inoue brushed past him -- he'd forgotten that she lived so near here, they'd probably called her in -- and he only spared enough time to kick and then grind the heel of his foot onto Kon's head when the stuffed animal tried to cling to his leg and wail something about "Nee-san". Rather, they stayed trained on the still so silent figure lying on the futon, glued to the slow, gentle rise and fall of her chest. It wasn't a fatal wound, it was too high and not close enough to any vital organs, the only real danger was blood-loss. At least... that's what the logical portion of his mind kept repeating. That portion that had helped his father oversee so many treatments, that had watched as flesh was stitched together and bleeding abated.

It would have helped if that part of his brain had really been able to make him feel any better. Unfortunately, he wasn't that lucky, standing there in the doorway, the golden glow from Inoue's power casting sunset shadows across his face, deepening the lines drawn into his brow as his scowl furrowed even further, worry and unease warring with the normal sullen expression for a moment. He stayed like that for hours, far past when she should have woken up. She _should_ have woken up, Inoue had fixed it, had returned the injuries to their prior nonexistent state, there was no _reason_ why pale eyelids still remained closed, why the only motion was still that even tempo of breaths that made their way slowly into her lungs.

Reaching out an arm, he snagged Yoruichi's sleeve as the dark-skinned woman slipped past, narrowing amber gaze at her. He didn't dare yank on her arm, as much as he wanted to -- he'd learned the hard way that Shihouin Yoruichi was, is, and would always be faster than he was, and seeing the way she and Urahara fought... well, he knew better than to push his luck.

"Why the hell won't she wake up? Inoue fixed everything, didn't she?"

Yoruichi paused, glancing away for a moment before she relaxed with a sigh, turning to face him. Shrugging off his grip, she folded slim arms across her chest to level a narrowed golden gaze at him. It wouldn't do to keep him in the dark, he'd find out sooner or later. And she'd have to listen to him whine. So might as well be sooner.

"She fixed everything she could, Ichigo. Some things... can't be healed that easily. We did all we could, but... it was just too late, I guess."

Brown eyes widened before narrowing into a scowl as his fingers twitched, itching to grab her, to shove her back against the wall and demand that she explain, that she take it back, tell him the truth and stop toying with things. But the worst of it was that he knew she _wasn't_ joking, wasn't making light of the situation. Even if he hadn't been able to tell by the even and level way gilded irises burned into his, that cold knot in the pit of his stomach -- the one that had stubbornly refused to leave -- only seemed to clench tighter, telling him in not so many words, that everything she said was true.

"It's her soul, Ichigo. There's... something wrong with it. It's like a mirror, that's been broken. And there's something, whatever it is that broke it, that's interfering, keeping those pieces from rejoining. Eventually... they'll just crumble away. And there's nothing we can do about it. I'm sorry."

Sliding past him, she spared a last glance over her shoulder, watching him as he just stood there, face unreadable, hands by his side. Shoulders trembled slightly as his fingers curled into a fist before his arm lashed out, slamming into the paneled wood of the wall with enough force to rattle the windows, his entire frame shaking slightly with suppressed anger. Or... anger and something else, perhaps. With a sigh, the dark-haired shinigami continued on her way down the hall. Kisuke. Kisuke would know what to do. He always seemed to.


	2. Pathway to Purgatory

If anyone had ever said that Kurosaki Ichigo didn't brood, than they obviously didn't know him very well. Hell, even people who _didn't_ know the orange-haired shinigami very well generally had little trouble recognizing the fact that "brooding" was one of the many descriptive terms that could aptly be applied to his personage. But right now that was beside the point, seeing as there could be little mistaking the thick and oppressive aura surrounding him, an aura comprised somewhat of frustration and anger but almost moreso of a despair that was unusual for him. Despair, worry, concern... those were all emotions that Ichigo didn't have an easy time dealing with and for that same reason usually kept bottled up within where others wouldn't see. But in this case, something else had overridden that reflex action and laid them bare for others to see.

Her.

Or rather, her current status, which was to say the fact that said female shinigami was lying motionless and unresponsive a few rooms away, and there was fuck-all he could do about it. Ichigo didn't do well with situations like that, he wasn't _used_ to not knowing what to do, to the feeling of powerlessness that seemed right now to be dragging him down into depths he didn't want to revisit. It was too much, too similar to that last time, when he'd been just a kid -- innocent, most would say, in spite of his own feelings -- and he'd been powerless against the unseen force that had taken his mother from him, completely unable to do anything against what he would learn years later was a Hollow. That day had haunted his dreams for years since, as he could never escape the guilt that he heaped on himself. And now it was happening again.

But this time, he wasn't going to be powerless. Setting his face into it's familiar scowl, orange brows drawing together across his forehead, Ichigo pushed himself up off of the floor, one hand grabbing Zangetsu as he stood up. Slinging the blade onto his back, he loped down the hallway in search of the one person who might perhaps have an answer for him.

It didn't take long to find the tall figure leaning against the wall of the back porch, Yoruichi sitting cross-legged a few feet away as both stared out at the evening dusk. It would have been a rather picturesque scene, the two longtime friends -- and he suspected something a bit more, though he'd never voiced any opinions -- enjoying a quiet evening amidst the fireflies that flitted through the summer night, but amidst the almost romantic setting was interlaced a heavy atmosphere that reeked of concern and tension. Yoruichi's eyes flickered towards him as Ichigo stepped out onto the porch, amber-brown gaze focused unerringly on the figure of Urahara Kisuke leaning against the wall and sipping nonchalantly from a cup of tea.

"Oi. Getaboushi. How do I fix her?"

There was no hesitation in his words, no hint of doubt or concern that there might not _be_ a way to fix her. Because in Ichigo's mind that was never an option. There WAS a cure, there just _had_ to be. And if there wasn't... then he would make one. The orange haired shinigami bristled slightly as a chuckle dropped from the older man's lips as he lowered the cup, leaning blond head back against the polished wood to slant blue-gray eyes at his younger protege. It was admirable, in more ways than one, how devoted the boy was to Rukia, and while he knew better than to press the young man about it -- though he had to admit it was amusing to watch Ichigo squirm, he had to envy Isshin the ability to do it so well -- Kisuke was no fool. Monogamy -- at least in the generally thought of terms -- may not have been _his_ forte, and he certainly wasn't one for excessive emotions, but he knew love when he saw it and he hadn't had to point out to either Isshin OR Yoruichi how much the boy was like his father at times. Turning his head slightly, he raised an eyebrow at the younger Kurosaki.

"And what if I told you there _was_ a way? Would you be willing to try it, no matter what the cost? Even if, were you to fail, your own soul would be the price you paid in addition to losing hers forever?"

Kisuke had to give him credit, seeing as there was only a momentary hesitation in those angry eyes before his jaw set and he nodded, fists clenching by his side. It spoke not only of courage, but of resolve and depth of feeling that the boy was so willing to place his life on the line yet again for someone close to him.

"I won't let that happen. I'll do it. Whatever it takes."

With a nod to Yoruichi, Kisuke turned and brushed past Ichigo to continue down the wall, sipping his tea as he went, not a fraction of his mannerisms in any way exuding hurry or urgency. So steely-calm even in the wake of all that was happening, but maybe that was just Kisuke, who never seemed surprised by anything, as though everything in his world was somehow carefully measured and fed and wired through a complex interconnected web that he exercised and maintained complete control over. Completely in contrast to Ichigo, who was the picture of tension. Hands balled into fists at his sides, teeth gritted and eyes hard and angry with determination -- or was it irritation at Urahara's seeming lack of urgency -- and the resolve or stubbornness that always seemed to carry him through anything.

They made their way back to what had become Rukia's room, Kisuke simply settled himself down on the cushion beside Orihime. Taking the girl's wrist from her friend, he took a quick count of her pulse before setting it back down and pulling out a familiar dark blue glove. Or at least... it looked familiar until he pulled out a second one, tossing it past Ichigo's head to Yoruichi who caught it and plopped down on the other side of Rukia's head. Frowning for a moment, she cocked her head at Kisuke, as if to say "are you sure about this", and in another moment of seemingly soundless conversation between the two, she simply nodded before the former 12th division captain turned his gaze back to Ichigo.

"Do you know what happens when a shinigami shares their powers with another?"

It didn't seem to be a very pertinent question, especially given that they weren't talking about that, they were talking about Rukia. A fact which Ichigo began to crossly point out before he found his head forcibly planted in the floor by Yoruichi's hand as she told him to "be a good boy and shut up when someone was trying to help him out". Growling at her, he nonetheless did as she said, scowling back at Urahara and rubbing the back of his head. Bitch. How the hell was any of this supposed to help Rukia?

Seeing as his audience was now captive again, he continued, using his ever-present fan as emphasis, though to what extent was anyone's guess.

"Now, as I was saying, shinigami sharing powers with humans -- or other souls for that matter -- is an extremely rare thing. But when it occurs, a connection is made between the two souls. A reiatsu connection. In essence, it acts as a resonating frequency, causing the two soul-pulses to resonate in harmony with one another."

Ichigo had to assume that it was obvious to everyone else that he wasn't quite getting it, as Yoruichi's fist bopped him on the head with another exasperated sigh. "Pay attention, Ichigo! It means that you and she have similar reiatsu."

As much sense as her words made, he wasn't about to actually admit he hadn't understood to begin with. Dire straits or not, he had his pride as a man. So he instead scowled at the dark-skinned woman with a snarl of "I knew that!" and turned his attention back to Urahara.

"So what's that got to do with any of this?"

"Because. The only way for anyone to help her is to figure out what happened to her. In essence, to go into her soul and put the pieces back together and fix what's broken. Like working a puzzle. And the only one who can do that, is someone with harmonic reiatsu."

All of the words might not have made sense to him, but his eyes widened anyway as the overall message sank in. He could save her. By some freak twist of fate, the very thing that had brought them together in the first place was the only chance she had. Lips pressing together in a harsh line, he simply nodded.

"Then do it."

There was a moments pause as the two looked at each other before Kisuke bent over Rukia, gloved hand pressed to her forehead for a moment before he slowly drew it back, pale greenish energy collecting in his palm like a wisp of foxfire curling around his fingers, pulsing faintly with the same rhythm as the slow rise and fall of her chest. His eyes were so focused on her that he barely registered Yoruichi's palm impacting his forehead with a soft tap until he jerked back in startlement at the same green glow curling around her palm. Eyes wide and fixed on her hand, he simply watched as she pulled the wisp of green away from his head, pausing for a moment before turning and clapping her palm against the other ball of softly-swirling green in Kisuke's hand. And then, everything went black.

Orihime let out a yelp of surprise as Ichigo's body slumped forward, the only thing keeping his larger form from potentially crushing Rukia's being the barrier of Chad's arm as it shot out to catch him and then lay him back beside the smaller form, chests moving in tandem. Brushing a strand of hair behind her ear, she turned to Yoruichi, a look of concern in her gray eyes.

"Is.... is Kurosaki-kun going to be alright? And... what about Kuchiki-san?"

Yoruichi's eyes remained trained on the two unconscious figures as she resettled herself on the floor, recrossing her legs and slipping off the glove. "Only time will tell, Orihime. So all we can do now is wait. And trust Ichigo."


	3. Descent into Darkness

At first, there was nothing but blackness. Dark, inky, all-consuming. And then the blackness closed in even more and there was the sensation of free-fall, as though he was tumbling, plummeting towards some unknown destination. Closing his eyes against the encroaching darkness, Ichigo focused inward, reminding himself why he was doing this, why he was subjecting his very soul to something that, for all intents and purposes, may have been futile. Only... he wouldn't _let_ it be futile, wouldn't _let_ it become totally useless. He couldn't afford to let that happen. Not after he'd already failed her...

"Ichigo.... open your eyes."

It was a familiar voice, and one he hadn't expected to hear -- especially not HERE, of all places. But as soon as his mind registered the familiar tones, it also registered another thing. That he had stopped falling. Slitting open one eye, he backpedaled with a startled yelp to find himself -- for all intents and purposes -- _floating_. Not suspended in midair, as if in one of those anti-gravity rooms his science professor had shown them a video of, but just... there. As though he stood on a floor he couldn't see, in a room he also couldn't see. Scratching the back of his head for a moment, Ichigo tentatively tapped his foot against the "ground". It was disconcerting, the way it _felt_ like floor, but made no impact noise, no echoing, no.... nothing. Glancing up, he nodded at the other figure who seemed to float in the same manner a few feet in front of him.

"Old man Zangetsu....."

The black-garbed form of his materialized zanpakutou simply nodded, his demeanor the same usual stoic as always. It was strange, at least to Ichigo, to see him in this state. After all... this was supposed to be Rukia's mind, right? Unless.... he was still in his? His momentary thought to put that very same question to words was interrupted by Zangetsu's next words.

"This is as far as I can go, Ichigo. From here on... I won't be able to help you. Are you willing to take that risk?"

Narrowing his eyes for a moment, Ichigo nodded. "Yeah... I am."

"Very well, then. Be careful. Remember, this place you journey to is a place where you have only the control that she gives you. Reality itself will bend to her will, and in this case, possibly the will of what you seek. Good luck."

The corners of Ichigo's mouth turned up slightly, not really a smile in the traditional sense, but it was about as close to one as he ever got as he simply nodded. And then, Zangetsu was gone. And it was cold. Glancing around, he squinted for a moment and rubbed at his eyes. He was.... in a village? Only, it wasn't like any other village he'd been in before, and not only because this one seemed to look like something straight out of one of his history books. Which it did.

This village.... was abandoned. Much like the cityscape that made up his internal world -- maybe that was the way it went with these whole "inner-universe" things -- it was as silent as a cemetery, save for the low whistling of the wind that blew through the frosted landscape. Snow blanketed the ground, ice dotting the skeletal trees and eaves of the small cottages scattered throughout and amidst what looked almost to be ruins, remnants of old crumbling edifices of stone and wood. It seemed as though the whole town was abandoned, had been that way for a long time. The ice was frosted and thick, and the snow smooth and undisturbed. But the most disturbing -- he would have said downright weird -- aspect of the entire scene was the spots of colour that dotted the landscape. Large, ornate blooms of brilliant crimson so deep as to be the red of blood sprang from cracks and crannies, seemingly unaffected by the frigid environs that wrapped around them, glistening black stems and leaves in stark contrast to the pristine glow of the snow and ice. The only other colour in the entire scene sprang forward in a riotous tangle of green and red, heavy thick vines and lush leaves wrapping around corners and edges, as though they were serving as a thread to hold the very fabric of the world together.

_Those are..... strawberries?_

Taking a hesitant step forward, Ichigo leaned down to take a closer look at one of the spindly vines wrapping around the edge of a porch. Pushing a few leaves aside, he studied the swollen red fruit hanging off of the vines. Strawberries, like he'd thought, but significantly bigger than most of the ones you could get at the store. They reminded him of the imported ones that Yuzu had bought one year and dipped in chocolate for him even though he'd scowled and professed his distaste for the fruit. Tracing fingers over the bumpy skin of the strawberry, he stepped back, letting the leaves drop with a frown. It really... didn't make sense. He'd always assumed that all shinigami must possess one of those inner-universe things like he had, but he'd always figured that Rukia's would be something cute and girly, likely covered in rabbits and possibly with some sort of giant Chappy-like thing in the center. Not.... this wasteland of ice and silent flowers.

"They weren't always there, Kurosaki-sama."

He whirled at the voice, strange and yet somehow familiar to him. It had a bell-like tone, echoing in the landscape slightly despite it's soft timbre. In a way, it sounded like Rukia's voice, only with an added dimension of cold brittleness and formality to it, as though the words themselves were frozen ice in the twilight sky. It wasn't hard to find the source of the voice, a small girl, no bigger than Rukia. She seemed almost to blend into the landscape in her pristine white kimono, skin the same ghostly white. Her eyes were blood-red orbs in a childlike face that eerily resembled Rukia's, long white hair pulled up into an ornate style on her head and held in place by an intricate black metal clip studded with gems that looked made of crystalized blood. Studying him with those eyes, she raised a hand to her lips, bloodied nails cupping one of the strawberries as red lips curled back from pearly teeth to take a delicate bite of the fruit.

"The strawberries, Kurosaki-sama. They were not always a part of Mistress' world."

She spoke with a clipped manner, as though it were merely a matter of fact and he was a fool for not understanding it earlier. Growling, he backpedaled, one hand automatically reaching for Zangetsu, a string of curses pouring from his lips to find it absent from it's usual position against his shoulder-blades. The girl regarded him with an almost bored expression, simply continuing to eat the strawberry as though he wasn't even there. Which, of course, only served to piss him off more as he glared at her.

"Who the hell are you? And where the hell is this? Where's Rukia?"

One white eyebrow raised slightly as she finished the berry, licking thick droplets of juice off of her fingertips and shaking her head slightly. Really, such awful manners, what _did_ her mistress see in the boy? Taking a step forward, seeming to glide soundlessly across the landscape, she stopped a short distance in front of him.

"I am Sode no Shirayuki. And this is the world of my Mistress' mind. As for Mistress herself, she is... hidden. I cannot find her, which is why I have allowed you into this place."

Sode no Shirayuki... that was the name of Rukia's zanpakutou, his mind vaguely supplied for him as he simply stared at her, taking in her words. The seconds ticked by before he began to relax. She wasn't an enemy. At least... she didn't seem to be one. Gesturing with one hand, he glanced around at the frozen world around them.

"So.... is it always like this? And what the hell did you mean about the strawberries?"

Turning her head as if to regard him again, she gave the boy a long look. Though it was the first time she'd seen him herself, she knew who he was, knew everything about him that her mistress did, and probably a good deal more than Rukia realized about the relationship between the two. And because of that, she knew that if anyone was to have a chance at restoring this world to it's proper balance, it would be the orange-haired teen that her mistress held in such high esteem.

"If you refer to the snow and the ice, then yes. It has always been this way. The flowers as well, although they grow more abundantly in brighter times. And the strawberries have only been here recently."

She paused in her steps to turn back and regard him again with that same level, penetrating gaze, as though she were looking _through_ him, not just at him. Was he really unable to make the connection between the pervasive vines and himself?

"Since _you_ became a part of her life."

He froze mid-step as her words registered, the shock of what he'd just heard blowing past even the unconscious part of his mind that rose up in outrage at the comparison of himself to said namesake. He.... he'd caused this? No.... she hadn't said he'd made the world like this, just that the strawberries were there because of him. But... why? Why would he have such an impact on her inner world?

"Because it is the bond she shares with you, Kurosaki-sama, that holds this world together when her own strength fails her."

Ichigo hadn't even realized he'd spoken his query aloud until her response made him almost trip over his own feet. He'd always known that he was important to Rukia, hell she was important to him too, but he'd never really had to face the possibility of just HOW important he was to his pint-sized companion. Really... he'd avoided thinking about it, just as he'd avoided thinking about a lot of things. Glancing back, he realized that Sode no Shirayuki had kept moving on without him and with a scowl he sped up, catching up with her -- she could move fast for such a little person. Opening his mouth to not only protest the fact that she kept leaving him the hell behind but to get her to stop saying weird shit, his attention was drawn to a momentary flash of colour, a deviation from the stark white and vermilion of the small village. A child, peering out from behind a wall. Looking closer, he was surprised by the realization that it wasn't a child -- at least, not a normal one -- but rather a young Rukia, looking around 4 or 5, wrapped in an almost over-sized pale blue flowered kimono and sporting a pair of white rabbit ears on her head.

It wasn't even a conscious thought, more like a compulsion that moved his feet as he took off towards her, one hand outstretched as she flitted away like a frightened bird, something in his mind telling him that _this_ was right, this was the right part, something that was important that had to do with that little girl.

"Wait! Don't run away, it's me!"

Giving chase, he stopped short as Sode no Shirayuki reappeared in front of him in a whirlwind of ice chips and snow, white hair falling pristinely back into it's smooth style in spite of the wind. He stepped back with an outraged scowl at her interference, it didn't make any sense, why the hell was she stopping him? Hadn't she said she needed his help in the first place? Crazy bitch, he couldn't help but assume she must have picked it up from Rukia. Or.... Rukia got it from her. Or.... something. Trying to get around her, he watched as the little girl vanished into the snow before rounding on Shirayuki with a snarl, fingers gripping her shoulders tightly so that he could yell at her properly.

"The hell did you do that for?! She's what I've got to find, isn't she? Then why the hell'd you stop me?!"

Punctuating his outbursts with violent shakes to her slight figure, he gave a hiss of pain, jerking back hands as though they'd been burnt, brown eyes glaring murderously at the girl who simply stood there, the frost receding from her shoulders. The fool, forgetting she wasn't a normal girl. Raising her chin in haughty imitation of the same expression her mistress often used on him, she regarded Ichigo with a calculating and cold demeanor.

"You would do well to understand, Kurosaki-sama, that no one but Mistress bears the right to touch me thus. It is a fact that you should grow accustomed to during your stay here. As for the child, she is indeed an important aspect of this all. However, it is not so simple as you would make it to be. You will doubtlessly face the foe which has ruined this world and caused Mistress' disappearance. And for that... you will need this."

She held out her hand as the ice swirled up, condensing and thickening into a shape he recognized. Zangetsu, it's gleaming black metal dwarfing her smaller figure, it's point buried in the snow at her feet. Tracing one small fingertip along the edge of the blade, she put the finger to her lips, sucking at the blood welling from the cut.

"It is not your true blade, Kurosaki-sama, merely a facsimile of it, created by my power. It will allow you to fight in this place. Now... are you ready to face this fight?"

It was probably pointless to really ask him that, as what she'd seen of Kurosaki Ichigo through the eyes of her Mistress would lead her to believe that he wasn't the sort to back down from a fight. Even when it was a fight he probably _should_ back down from. But this... this was different. Her Mistress was at stake. And to set things right, she had to be able to trust him.

Looking at her a moment, he brushed past her with a scoff, grabbing the blade out of the ground. She was asking stupid questions she already knew the answer to, just like Rukia. Figured. Slinging the blade onto his back, he glanced back over his shoulder at her.

"So, we going or what?"


	4. Window to Hell

As he'd walked, following the small, even footsteps of Shirayuki, Ichigo couldn't help but keep his guard up, keep one hand resting lightly on Zangetsu's hilt as they traveled. Or... the sword that _looked_ like Zangetsu, seeing as it _wasn't_ Zangetsu. It wasn't as much that he expected the girl in front of him to turn and attack -- though if she was part of Rukia then it might not have been that far beyond the imagination -- but simply that he didn't _trust_ this place. Something was... different, strange to him, beyond the fact that he was in Rukia's head. Yes, that in itself was a bit strange when you really thought much about it but he'd certainly dealt with weirder stuff before. No, it was something else. Something.... darker, more sinister. It was as though, concealed from his eyes, someone was watching. Veiled in the persistent twilight of the sky hanging overhead, yet gazing down upon the two with it's thick and malevolent stare as it waited, stalking them the way a cat would stalk a mouse.

_THAT_ was it, he realized with a start. It wasn't even the feeling of eyes ghosting across the back of his neck and causing the little hairs on his skin to rise, it was that he felt _trapped_. As though he was walking headlong into the jaws of a predator that was simply biding it's time and waiting. Playing with them, watching as they made their way unwittingly into it's claws, only to notice when it was already too late.

Shuddering slightly, Ichigo ground his teeth together, instead focusing on the task at hand. Well, that and the fact that he didn't understand why the hell Shirayuki had to walk so damned slow all the time. If he hadn't been sure -- and he was relatively sure, given what had happened earlier -- that he'd come out injured if he tried, it was pretty tempting to just scoop her up under one arm the way he'd have done were it Rukia. Although... that tended to net him injuries as well, seeing as Rukia never appreciated it either. Which was stupid, seeing as it was her damn fault for not walking fast enough.

So lost in thought was he that he nearly tripped right over his guide, stumbling back with a lurid curse and leveling a scowl down at the petite white-haired girl.

"The hell did you stop for!?"

She gave him her answer in the form of one red-tipped finger as she raised her hand to point out ahead of them. Ichigo's eyes followed the simple gesture as his gaze traveled in a sweeping arc towards the landscape in front of him, amber-brown irises widening as he simply stopped short and stared.

"Wh...what the...?"

The difference between the landscape ahead of them and the snow-drenched village they had just come from was startling -- and that was being gentle about it -- in it's stark contrast. It was still the village, still the same little quiet buildings pockmarking the thick crusted snow, the same winding narrow path that threaded it's way through into the distance beyond. But that was where the similarities ended. Here, the snow was crusted in places with dark rusty stains -- he was relatively sure they were blood, but he didn't want to find out for sure -- that stretched in splattered arcs up on the walls. The crimson flowers that had draped the scene in splashes of living colour lay shredded, petals rent asunder, laying in wilted heaps as though some angry hand had ripped them from their broken, trailing vines. The strawberries were in similar disarray, smashed fruits peppering the ground in fetid, rotting specks of vermilion. Cracks stretched through the snow, deep gaping fissures that seemed to reach down beyond the snow and into the world itself, sprays of crystallized steam reaching up in grisly mockery of the snowflakes that still fell softly. Even the sky was tainted, the twilight moon showing bloodied fingers of light through thick clouds.

It took a moment for Shirayuki's calm and even voice to break through the shock and abject nausea he felt at seeing Rukia's inner world like this. It was... just wrong. And not even the appearance -- although he couldn't help but be pretty certain _that_ was wrong too -- but just a sense, a feeling. An overwhelming and oppressive thickness that clung to everything and turned his stomach. It was almost like feeling Kenpachi's reiatsu for the first time, bearing down on you and pressing all the life out of you until simply taking a breath is so much agony you lose the will to. Rukia's world... shouldn't ever feel that way.

Swallowing past the bile that rose in his throat, Ichigo turned his attention back to where the white girl was still talking. Something about the changes in this part of the world.

".... you weren't listening, Kurosaki-sama."

Normally, the slight biting edge to her voice -- Rukia's voice, almost -- would have made him gulp just a little, worry just a little that a beating was imminent. But not this time. This time he simply nodded, his gaze returning to her small face. Whatever she was saying.... it was important. He needed to listen. At his renewed attention, Shirayuki nodded slightly and cleared her throat, returning to her explanation.

"This... is the boundary. It marks the spread of the canker into Mistress' mind. This is a place of darkness. A dangerous realm where my powers diminish. Many things have contributed to the decay here, besides the attack of this thing. Mistress' own exhaustion, the immense stress that she places upon herself by the continued feelings of guilt and remorse for her past, the constant struggle to overcome her own fears. And now... when things are darkest, Mistress has lost the will to continue."

Ichigo felt his jaw clench, teeth grinding against each other at those words. Lack of will... that wasn't Rukia. It wasn't _his_ Rukia -- though where the "his" came from he had no idea -- and it wasn't something he was willing to just accept. Rukia didn't just give up. She was stronger than that, so much so that he felt -- though he'd never in a million years admit it -- almost useless sometimes. Because whether he liked it or not, she _didn't_ need him to protect her as much as he wanted to think she did.

Hi opened his mouth to say something, to argue with this... this stupid little girl that Rukia wasn't like that, Rukia wouldn't just _give up_, when a familiar peal of laughter broke through the air. Like a chime, ringing out against the snow and echoing with cold malice, the sound sent chills down his spine as he spun around to locate it's sound. It _couldn't_ be. Not here, not in _her_ mind. But there was barely time to be relieved at the realization as his attention was drawn upwards, to where the red-stained moon hung low in the sky, illuminating a slight figure perched on the roof of a crumbling cottage. Blood-red light bathed white shihakushou in eerie crimson hues, glinted off of alabaster skin as white lips curled back from equally white teeth in derisive laughter as blue tongue curled out to lick slowly along the glinting black edge of the blade. One small white hand reached up to comb through jet black tresses as black and gold eyes stared down at him.

Rukia. But no Rukia that he'd ever seen. It was as though his hollow, that lurking, waiting _thing_ in his soul that whispered to him at every turn, threatening to consume him if he ever let his guard down, was staring back at him. But it wasn't _him_. It was her. Drawing Zangetsu with a snarled curse, he backed up a step, staring in horrified fascination as she carefully played the black-ribboned blade in her hand across her wrist, drawing a thin line of crimson before lapping out her tongue to slide blue flesh along white skin and lick at the red droplets that oozed from the wound, a high-pitched giggle emanating from her throat that chilled him to the bone. Growling, he turned towards Shirayuki, standing there silently and making no move to attack.

"THE FUCK IS THAT?! Rukia doesn't have a goddamned hollow!"

The figure on the rooftop laughed again, that same high-pitched cackle, before raising an eyebrow at him mockingly as she lowered the black blade. "Oh, are you so sure~ of that?~ After all, this is your precious Ru~ki~a~'s mind now, isn't it? And if I'm here... then I guess that would mean that she do~oes~ have one~"

It wasn't true, his mind screamed at him, _couldn't_ be true. It was just something here, some trick her mind was playing on him, some _game_ that they were playing. And it wasn't a funny one. Brandishing Zangetsu at the ready, mentally cursing the fact that he couldn't -- as far as he knew -- go to bankai, he readied another barrage of questions before Shirayuki cut him off abruptly.

"Of course Mistress doesn't have one of those disgusting things inside of her. That is merely a portion of her. Her own "inner darkness", you may call it. Seen through your eyes, it simply takes a form that is familiar to you. In this case, a similar form of the darkness within _you_. The darkness you would wish to deny the existence of, Kurosaki-sama."

He could have strangled her. Probably _would_ have done so, were it not for his sense of self-preservation -- and the fact that without her he couldn't DO any of this -- but either way his attention was swiftly drawn as the hollow-facsimile of Rukia leaped from her perch on the roof with a crazed laugh of glee, diving at him, sword at the ready as the black ribbon trailed rings in the bloodied sky behind her. He barely had enough time to bring Zangetsu to bear before they came together in a crash and a screech of metal, his feet skidding back in the snow as she pushed forward, mocking laugh grating on his nerves as she licked her lips suggestively. He pushed back, his senses screaming at him to fight back, to destroy this... this _thing_ masquerading as Rukia.

_But... if she's a part of Rukia... and you hurt her... then won't you hurt Rukia too?"_

With a wicked chuckle, she drove forward with another slash that he blocked, pushing him back further and further as he simply tried to block, tried to defend and _think of something_. But what?

"You don't really think you can win, do you?~ Especially.... not with _this_"

With a sudden push, he heard a cracking sound. Looking down, his eyes widened to see the split travel along the length of Zangetsu, the crack widening as he backpedaled, the broken halves of the weapon glistening into the ice they had been as Ichigo's back hit the snow, brown eyes wide. The hollow loomed over him for a moment, the obsidian point of her blade resting at his throat, pressing just enough that he could feel the prick of skin breaking, feel the warm tingle as blood trickled down the side of his neck before she stepped back, laughing again.

"I didn't think so~ Go home, little boy. Go home before you wind up de~ad~"

With a final laugh, she turned and walked back through the ruins, her form melting away into the snow as Ichigo pushed himself to his feet, one hand clenching around the broken ice that had once been his defender as he turned angry eyes onto Shirayuki. She expected him to fight... with what?

"The hell am I supposed to do now?! Give me a damned weapon that's _worth_ something! I can't-"

His voice cut off as the shards swirled up and coalesced back into the gleaming black metal of Zangetsu, held easily at his throat by Shirayuki's small hand, her angry blood-hued eyes staring hardly at him along the length of the blade.

"THIS is not what lacks worth, Kurosaki-sama. What lacks worth is _your_ resolve. You think to protect my mistress, to save her and rescue her and keep her safe from all dangers. You think that by fighting here, you cause risk to her. I tell you now, if that is your attitude, than Mistress is doomed. You cannot fight with that _weakness_ in your heart. Wounds given to Mistress here will be far less severe than the ultimate wound of oblivion. Now..."

Spinning the blade -- he had no idea HOW, it was bigger than she was -- she slammed the tip into the crusted snow and stepped back, icy fire ringing in her tone.

"Do you fight, or do you run, Kurosaki-sama?"

He scowled at her for a moment before pushing himself to his feet and yanking the blade out of the ground. She didn't have to act all damned stupid now. He wasn't running.


	5. Journey to Judgement

He didn't know how long they'd walked, how long they'd spent crossing the frozen wasteland pockmarked with the gutted ruin that had once been the small -- if anything in someone's inner universe could really be called small -- villages which constituted the insides of Rukia's soul. Time didn't seem to flow here, the ever-present violet dusk of the sky stretching as far and as long as he could see, the faint occasional pinpricks of stars blotted out by the heavy coat of noir the thick clouds drew across it, their nightmarish visage tinted crimson by the blood-streaked moon hanging low in the sky as if in defiance of them all. A mocking sentry to their -- at least to his view -- lack of progress.

Stepping around yet another deep, gaping fissure in the snow-crusted ground, Ichigo felt his scowl deepen as amber-brown eyes took a moment to gaze into the seemingly bottomless chasm, the faint wisps of steam crystalizing into frosted tendrils that almost resembled cotton candy. Or at least... he would have said they did, had it not been for the morbidity of the splattered blood painting the path they walked, the fetid odor of the trampled and decaying strawberries that hung like overripe swollen carcasses from their blotched and cankered vines. He'd gotten a bit more accustomed to the smell, enough to keep the bile from rising too high in the back of his throat.

He _wasn't_ going to throw up again. Not after the way _she'd_ looked at him after the first time, watching with eyes that mimicked the bloodstains on the frosted snow, an expression of haughty disdain painted across her childlike face with it's crimson slash of a mouth as bloodied fingertips curled around the overlong white sleeves of her kimono, somehow never leaving the stains of the thick sanguine fluid on the pristine silk. He hated the way she looked at him, like he was nothing, as if he was somehow _unworthy_ of being in this place. It reminded him of the way Kuchiki Byakuya regarded him, and made it hard to imagine that this... this condescending brat was Rukia's zanpakutou.

Not because Rukia couldn't be a condescending brat -- she could --, but because that _look_ on Sode no Shirayuki's face was a look he knew -- _how_ he knew was anyone's guess -- that he'd never see on Rukia's. Smug, superior, both of those fit the midget shinigami well, but the thinly veiled disgust... no. That wasn't Rukia. Clenching his teeth harder, he focused his angry glare on the crown of her snow-white head, as though purely by the power of his distaste, he could bore a hole right through the back of the arrogant little ice bitch's brain. If... zanpakutou spirits really even _had_ brains, which he wasn't sure they did. Either way, that was something to be pondered on at a later date, when there were less important things to consider.

As though reading his thoughts -- hell, maybe she _could_ pull that kinda shit, after all hadn't Urahara said this was _her_ world? -- the girl in front of him stopped, her zori-clad footsteps ending as silently as they had been progressing, the crimson laquer crunching soundlessly into the film of ice coating the snowfall. Pulling up short as she stopped, he automatically reached one hand over his shoulder, closing it around the cold metal hilt of the false Zangetsu in a reflexive gesture. He didn't sense anything, at least not anything beyond the near-maddening sense that they were being watched, that something -- or some_one_ \-- that they couldn't see was pulling the strings, but then again, Ichigo didn't tend to be a very trusting individual and that habit was significantly strengthened when he found himself in a situation such as this.

Shirayuki simply stood still for a moment, staring straight ahead as if studying something only she could see. As the seconds ticked by, the substitute shinigami could feel his irritation growing, his other hand curling into a fist by his side as he growled low in his throat, taking a step forward, the only other sound the soft crunch of his waraji againstthe snow.

"The hell'd you stop for, we can't-"

His words were cut off as she turned her head slightly to regard him over her shoulder, ruby irises boring directly into his brown ones.

"We have arrived, Kurosaki-sama."

At her words, from the blackness -- when the hell did it turn black, hadn't there been more village there a second ago?! -- in front of her, there was a sound. A horrible, screeching and grating sound, as though inumerable hollows had screamed at once, the sound accompanied by the sudden appearance of gale-force winds. Stifling a curse, Ichigo pulled his arms up to shield his face against the knife-like blades of the wind, wincing as he felt shards of ice cut into his forearms, little crimson lines sliding across his flesh as the wind howled and the icy storm battered them. He could barely make out Sode no Shirayuki's small form sillhouetted in front of him, standing as though unaffected by the wind, her long white hair and the sleeves of her kimono billowing like sails in the tempest.

Clenching his eyes shut, he opened his mouth to scream a curse, to demand that she tell him what the fuck was going on, what the hell she meant by "we have arrived", and how the hell he was supposed to do _anything_ when he couldn't even see in the damned snowstorm when suddenly, it was over. As evenly as a light switch being turned on and off, the wind was gone as though it had never been. Blinking back his surprise, Ichigo slowly lowered his arms, resisting the urge to brush snow and ice that wasn't there off of his shihakushou. Where once had been a seemingly endless expanse of frozen wasteland and villages dotted with ridiculously huge strawberries and creepy blood-red flowers, now they were in a.... library?

Plowing a hand through orange hair, he craned his head back to stare up overhead, squinting his eyes to take in the surroundings. It was a library all right, or at least.... he _assumed_ it was a library. It was dim, as though the entire thing -- room, place, whatever it was -- sat in the center of a very dark room, and was lit by some single solitary light in the center, just bright enough to cast illumination to the point that whomever else entered could make out the towering shelves, filled with countless heavy volumes, their ornate wooden frames reaching up so high that he honestly couldn't even make out the tops of them.

The shelves were everywhere, crowded into the space like walls, creating row upon row of mazelike corridors, their sides and ends abutting each other at odd angles that seemed to defy the normal gridlike pattern of a library. Amidst the hulking shelves rested pile upon pile of bound folios, buckets of scrolls, teetering stacks of manuscripts and memoirs, each volume dusty and yellowing. Resisting the sudden urge to sneeze, he had to assume it was a rather stupid urge seeing as none of the dust was _real_, Ichigo turned to interrogate his companion only to find that she had, during his own internal musings, simply continued on walking in that irritating manner of hers that made him want to choke the hell out of her. As if he knew his way around this place, wasn't she supposed to be his fucking guide?

Taking off at a run through the stacks of literature, it thankfully only took him a few moments to find the small white-clad figure, still walking as though without a care to the fact that she was leaving him behind. Stalking up behind her, it was only a momentary reminder to himself of what had happened the last time that kept him from grabbing one silk-covered shoulder and spinning her around. Instead, he settled for insinuating himself in front of her with a snarl.

"Quit that running off shit already! Aren't you supposed to be my damned _guide_ or something? A guide's not supposed to just wander the hell off without the person they're guiding, you know."

Stopping in her tracks as his larger form blocked her way, Shirayuki raised her head to regard the orange-haired teen for a moment before answering in her usual clipped and frosty tone.

"Then perhaps the one being guided should cease his useless gawking and concern himself with the matters at hand, Kurosaki-sama. Do you not hear that?"

He growled back at her. Stupid little midget bitch, standing there and lecturing him like that, with her mocking "Kurosaki-sama" bullshit. Snarling, he curled his hand into a fist again, if only to resist the urge to grab the front of her kimono and yank her up to his level so he'd stop having to stare down at her.

"Ok, cut the bullshit! I know you don't fucking like me, so cut the hell out with that 'Kurosaki-sama' crap already. I don't give a damn about you, or about the fact that you don't like me, but it's irritating as hell!"

Regarding him coldly, Shirayuki simply stood there silent for a moment. Really, the boy was so thick it was no wonder her mistress found the need to heap such abuses onto his person. It was almost amusing, in a way, the barely-leashed anger in his eyes, the delicious way his reiatsu flared as he tried to utilize his height to his advantage -- it wouldn't work, not with her, but it was rather amusing to see him try -- and the way his eyes lightened, turning almost golden with the force of his words. But it was all pointless, seeing as his rather bull-headed assumption was completely wrong.

"You are mistaken, Kurosaki-sama, in thinking that mocking you is of any interest to me. While I myself may regard you as little more than a nuisance to my Mistress' person, the fact remains that while _I_ care little for you, _she_ holds you in much esteem and it is in deference to that esteem that I address you thusly, Kurosaki-sama."

Apparently satisfied with her response, the girl continued her slow pace, brushing past him with a gust of icy air. Rolling his eyes, Ichigo shook his head. Rukia, esteem him? That was just stupid, especially if said esteem was demonstrated by calling him "-sama". Hell, the day Rukia called him "-sama" would probably prove to be the day that he needed to run for his life, and I mean _really_ run for it.

"You are missing the point entirely, Kurosaki-sama, which I am beginning to see is quite a frequent occurence. And you still have not answered my question. _Can you hear that_?"

He growled again, fixing her with a semi-murderous gaze. Damn little bitch and her fucking mind-reading crap. Grumbling to himself, he instead chose to concern himself with the second part of her statement. Frowning slightly, he paused and listened, his ears -- now that he was actually paying attention rather than focusing on Shirayuki's irritating self -- picking up the faint dripping sound that had echoed through the library since the first step they'd taken into the layers of dusty parchments. But above that, so faint that at first he wasn't certain that it was real, he could hear the faint whispers of someone's voice. Faint, even, almost droning, as though someone was reading. Reading aloud, in a monotone voice that held little timbre or tone to it.

"Someone's talking...."

Watching him, Shirayuki remained silent, one white eyebrow raising slightly at his comment. So, she'd been right after all. The boy, irritating as he was, did truly possess an unmatched affinity to her Mistress, an affinity that would -- hopefully -- prove to be the key that was needed to put all to right. The fact that he'd been able to recognize and hear the faint strains of sound stretching over the endless dripping of the ink in and of itself spoke highly of his potential, and at this point all that was left for her to do was to guide him and to hope that the bond he shared with her Mistress would prove itself strong enough.

Nodding, she continued walking, knowing he would follow.

"Indeed. It is what we seek in this place, though not our ultimate goal."

Ichigo scowled at her words. More riddles, more confusing crap. Why the hell couldn't she just _say_ what she meant and be done with it? Grumbling to himself, he simply followed behind, his footsteps echoing strangely amidst the tall stacks of books. Leading with an unerringly sure pace, as though she had traipsed it numerous times before, Shirayuki wove them easily through the maze of paper and leather, avoiding the dripping rivulets of ink that slid down the shelves like trickling streams of pitch to pool in puddles of black oil slicked on the polished wood floors, catching the candlelight glow from whatever source gave this place light.

As they walked, the droning muttering began to grow louder, it's tone taking shape and form, piecing into recognizable syllables and words, it's timbre becoming a recognizable pitch. As the shelves began to open up, their shapes fanning out to flank what Ichigo could only assume must have been the center of the room, his eyes widened with shock as he came to a startling realization. The voice, the muttering and droning voice wavering through the splashing of ink... was Rukia's voice.

"Here."

Shirayuki's voice stopped him, but not nearly as much as the sight that greeted his eyes. It was Rukia, but... unlike he'd ever seen her before. She was younger, dressed in what he had never seen but was willing to hazard a guess was the uniform she'd worn while in training to become a shinigami, the red hakama and white kosode with it's embroidered pinwheels on the front stark contrast to the puddle of midnight black ink beneath her, it's dark tendrils lapping at the edges of her slippered feet where they rested tucked beneath her. She sat, legs curled beneath her, on a huge sheaf of parchment, it's weathered edges held together with thick twine. Scattered about, their leather coverings seemingly undamaged by the ink, several huge tomes sat half-submerged in the dark liquid, their pages rustling slightly. But what caught his eye the most wasn't her location, or the books. It was the chains. Thick, black-iron coils of metal reached up from the depths of the pool of ink, their slick links wrapping around her torso and her legs, binding her to the ground. A white strip of silk blinded her eyes, and everywhere else, every patch of exposed skin was marked and covered in inked caligraphy, the black swirls of the brush in her hand sliding across her skin like something alive. In shock, Ichigo watched as the younger Rukia leaned down to dip her brush into the ink puddle at her feet before raising it and playing the fibers across her skin. As the ink touched flesh, more black characters appeared, moving across the surface of her body as if in a dance. As they slid down across the fabric of her clothing, he could see them thicken, darken, until they themselves became the chains holding her in place. Swallowing hard, he rounded on Shirayuki.

"What the hell is this!? That... that's NOT Rukia!"

"A very astute observation, Kurosaki-sama. And you are correct. That is _not_ Mistress, as the one you fought before was not her either."

Taking a moment to regain his control a little, shaken more by the effect that the sight had on him than the sight itself, Ichigo narrowed his eyes at her before turning amber gaze once again to the girl painting herself with the ink. Before, when he'd fought that... that _thing_... what had Shirayuki told him?

"So.... that means she's a part of Rukia.... right? Some part of her soul? If that's the case, and that other part was her dark side, then what the hell is _this_ side?"

She had to give him some degree of credit. While he didn't necessarily _look_ all that sharp, he could at least follow along it seemed. Nodding her head, she stepped forward, seeming to almost float over the dark puddles of ink, their taint never touching her.

"She represents the part of Mistress that is conflicted. The portion of herself that clings to the rules, that relies on their strict terms and guidelines as a support system, as a failsafe for times when she does not know what to do. The chains that bind her are the chains of those own rules, created by herself and by her unwillingness to see beyond them and see the things that she might have were she able to set herself free. In spite of the fact that she keeps herself bound, she continues to repeat them, to rewrite and rework and redelineate the boundaries and the order, thus perpetuating the cycle. Come."

Stepping over to the scattered tomes lying amidst the ink, she leaned down and hooked small fingers around the edge of one leather cover, lifting the book open. Sticky strings of ink clung to the cover's edges, almost as though the chains themselves wanted to try and keep the book closed, but with a creak of old leather it opened. Frowning, Ichigo stepped up behind her, leaning over her shoulder to peer at the blank pages in the tome.

"The hell? There's nothing in it..."

Reaching out to flip a page, Shirayuki kept her attention trained on the book, almost ignoring him.

"That is because you are not looking hard enough, Kurosaki-sama. Perhaps you should try again."

He opened his mouth to growl a retort that no matter how "hard he looked", that wasn't going to just _make_ words appear on blank paper, that it was stupid and they would be better to keep searching for the part of Rukia that he needed to find, when Zangetsu's words came back to him.

_This is **her** world.... so that means her rules...._

Sighing slightly, he fixed his eyes on the page again, not really sure exactly what was involved in 'looking harder', settling instead for simple concentration. Reiatsu.... he wasn't very good with it, and he plainly sucked when it came down to sensing it, but hadn't Urahara said the whole reason why this could work was because his reiatsu was like hers? Closing his eyes, he did his best to concentrate, to focus and relax and simply _allow_ it to work. Not that he really knew how it was supposed to work, he just had to hope that it would. And it seemed that -- at least this time -- luck was on his side, as he heard Shirayuki's small chuckle as the page began to glow softly.

"So... it seems you aren't entirely useless to me after all. Now... to simply find the right one."

Opening his eyes, he glanced down at the page over her shoulder, fully expecting to see lines of painted text, eyes widening at the sight that greeted his eyes instead.

"What th- That's.... that's Rukongai?"

There in front of him, painted into view as clearly as if he were watching it happening with his own eyes, firsthand, were what was unmistakably somewhere in Rukongai. In one of the poorer districts, he was willing to guess, given the shabby and somewhat dingy state of most of the buildings, the tattered clothing that the people walking the streets were wearing. He'd seen Rukongai before, but... it hadn't been anything like this. He knew that the district where they'd defeated Jidanbou, where they'd first met Ganju and where they'd later gained the aid of Kuukaku hadn't been an incredibly wealthy district, just as he'd been told that there were other, far worse places, but to see it firsthand.... was a different experience entirely.

Nodding, Shirayuki traced one crimson-tipped finger across the glimmering image as it shifted, this time to a view of what could have only been a childhood Rukia, her face rounded with youth, violet eyes huge in her face. In the light purple flowered kimono, she was almost the image of the rabbit-eared child that he'd been persuing. Shouldering his way closer, he paid no heed to the aggravated look that his smaller companion tossed at him as he studied the images, watching as the child in the image ran through the streets, scrounging for crusts of bread and stealing water. Shirayuki's hand reached to the edge of the page and before he even really thought about what he was doing, his own darted out to press the page back down.

"No, wait..."

Her eyebrows raised slightly, but she let it go, pulling back her hand to let him do as he pleased.

"Very well. But remember, our time is limited. You cannot stay here amusing yourself for long if you truly wish to save Mistress."

Nodding, he waved a hand at her as if to shoo her off, even though his attention wasn't on her anymore. It was on the child in the pictures, the little girl who was -- right now, since it had an annoying tendency to flicker through things almost like a video on skip mode -- pounding a childish Renji's face into the ground for one thing or another. It was... almost strange, to see Rukia like this. To see how, even younger, she was still the same bossy little brat she was now, but.... there was a difference there. A lightness almost, as though some heavy weight that she normally bore hadn't made itself known in her life at this point. He knew she carried a burden of guilt, something locked deep within her that he probably couldn't hope to understand. He knew, and that was the whole reason why he'd never actually _asked_ her about it. It wasn't his place, wasn't for him to pry. But now, watching as parts of her life that had taken place years before he even existed wandered across his vision, he couldn't help but wonder if he'd get to be privy to the source of her occasional melancholy.

Watching as the images shifted again, the girl now older, but with the same spunk and the same attitude, he could almost feel himself beginning to understand the things Renji said about her, to understand the reason for the crimson-haired vice-captain's pleading in Soul Society, when Renji had first begged him to save Rukia. She was... different, somehow. The same Rukia he knew, but now, within her mind, he was seeing a different side of her, seeing a side that had been there all along, he'd simply never taken the time to notice it. It made him feel strange, almost... protective of this portion of her, as though these memories were something precious, a gemstone resting hidden in the normally unbreakable rock of her personage, something tender and frail, treasured and tucked away where the hardships of the world couldn't touch them. Only.... that wasn't necessarily the case he had to assume, as he watched the child-woman in the images step back from placing a wreath of flowers around a small wooden cross, as the number of children playing shrank by one.

Watching him, Shirayuki measured the play of emotions across his face, studying the way the hardness in his gaze softened as he watched the image of her mistress, gangly with lingering girlhood, tucking a strand of hair behind one ear while her other hand held the sparkler away from her body, a purloined scrap of enjoyment in an all-too-difficult world. The boy was transparent -- at least, Shirayuki considered him to be, and not only because she could trace the lines of his thoughts -- and it was enough to make her wonder how someone who's emotions were so obvious to those around him could somehow still be so hidden to their own bearer.

Brown eyes still locked on the shifting, moving images, he reached out to pull the page towards him almost automatically, blinking as it turned on it's own, the images changing and moving as the parchment did, as the girl in the pictures grew, now clad in the red and white that he recognized as her academy uniform. Mesmerized by the images, Ichigo watched as the school-age Rukia strode down the hallways of what he could only assume was the academy, his eyes narrowing at the stares he could see the other students giving her. He snorted with suppressed laughter at the sight of a much younger, much less tattooed Renji running down the hall to meet up with her, scowling slightly at the barely restrained adoration he could see painted across Renji's face. He could see the shock on Renji's face, see the confusion and something almost akin to regret on hers as she stood there before the imposing figure of Kuchiki Byakuya and told her friend that the illustrious noble clan wished to adopt her.

And the pages turned again, the paper slipping past his fingers on it's own, as if blown by the wind that suddenly moved through the chamber. Image upon image of tutoring, lectures, entire afternoons spent on a cushion, feet cramping and hand seizing up as she painstakingly painted the calligraphy over and over again. Nights where she went hungry for hours until she learned the proper way to hold her bowl and the suitable way in which to behave at dinnertime. Rules upon rules upon rules. The rules that came with becoming a noble. The rules that became a cage of words and habits and honour, locking her away from that carefree child she had once been.

Frowning, he reached out to stop the book, to push the pages back as they sailed by even faster, their images shifting again. Hollows this time, as a young shinigami learnt her craft and learned to push aside the things that made her feel, the things that made her _human_. White masks breaking amidst screams, some of them hers. Bandages, lectures, scoldings, building up her small figure into a cold, emotionless shell of what he _knew_ she was. Gritting his teeth against the wind that was beginning to howl, ignoring the sense of _wrong_ shafting through him, Ichigo tried harder to hold onto the book, fighting against some unseen force that threatened to tear it from his hands. Amber eyes shifting to Shirayuki's serene, emotionless figure -- the hell wasn't she _doing_ something about this shit?! -- a curse tore from his lips as he lost the fight, the book wrenched from his grasp and sent spiraling through the air.

He was on his feet in a moment, waraji splashing into the ink as he followed, oblivious to Shirayuki's shout, his attention focused entirely on the book as it flew through the air, pulling up short as it landed, as if bidden, in one small white hand. Skidding to a stop in the ink, his muscles tensing and his mouth setting into an angry line, he reached a hand back to grasp the false Zangetsu's hilt as the familiar laughter lit the air.

"You."

It was a statement, not really a question, and the perverted image of Rukia told him so as she trailed blackened nails along the ink-marked binding of the book. Tossing the volume of text into the air, she caught it with another high-pitched giggle before turning to fix malevolent yellow eyes on the shinigami from her perch on top of one of the numerous piles of scrolls and manuscripts. With a little sigh, she flopped back onto her back, turning her head to the side to keep her gaze on him.

"So it is~. Did you miss me? How tou~ching~"

Rolling over onto her stomach, the hollow leaned over the edge of the stack, pursing her lips suggestively at him while one hand slid up to tug the neck of her white kosode off of one shoulder.

"If you wanted to see me.... you could have just asked, little strawberry~ But then.... I don't think that's what you want~ed. Is it?"

She didn't give him a chance to answer as her eyes narrowed into a sneer, dropping the book to land with a loud splash in the ink at his feet. Grinning widely, she drew back one hand, a small pinpoint of light swirling into view as she licked her lips with blue tongue.

"But it doesn't matter~ No, because.... you'll be dead anyway."

With an eerie bark of laughter, she launched the kidou -- he thought it was kidou, but whether it was kidou or a cero he didn't think it would matter -- at him. Biting back a curse, his hand clenched around the hilt of the sword, feeling it's comforting weight leave his back as the wrapping slipped down, loosening and sliding off as his own true Zangetsu's did. With a sweep of his hand he brought the gleaming blade around in an arcing motion, directly into the path of whatever energy she was launching at him. Gritting his teeth, he tensed in preparation for the impact that never came as the blast exploded into a blinding flash in front of him.

Staggering back, it took a few moments for his vision to clear enough to see the small figure of Shirayuki standing in front of him. Blinking the last spots out of his eyes, the orange-haired shinigami lowered his weapon hesitantly as the girl glanced back over her shoulder at him for a moment before turning to face him. As the shock of the moment cleared, his eyes snapped unerringly back to the top of the paper stack, expecting to find the dark facsimile of Rukia still standing there mocking him, only to be met with empty space where she had stood. His growl of irritation was answered by a small chuckle from Shirayuki.

"Admirable, Kurosaki-sama. However, completely unnessecary. As I have already told you, _she_ is not the enemy we are seeking. She is merely an irritant. Now, if you please..."

Stepping delicately over to where the large book lay discarded amidst the ink, she gripped the corner with small fingers, lifting it's dripping weight up to stand on one end. Flicking open the cover like a small door, she turned to regard him again. He didn't understand yet, but he would. Soon. And when he did.... their journey would become even more dangerous.

Frowning slightly, he watched as she opened the cover again, honey-hued irises widening in surprise at finding neither a blank page nor happy images inscribed on the parchment this time. Instead, it was as though she'd truly opened a doorway, the bulk of the page being consumed by what he thought looked oddly like what he'd always imagined black holes looked like in science class. A swirling, darkened portal that seemed to go to nowhere -- at least, "nowhere" was a pretty good approximation for the blackness beyond the edges of the page. She wanted him to walk through _that_? Slinging the zanpakutou back onto his back he regarded the small girl for a moment.

"Where does it go?"

Shirayuki's ruby eyes flickered from his face to the page as she studied the portal before turning back to him, her childlike face still serene.

"Hell. Or perhaps Heaven. Or perhaps another place entirely. It matters little. Wherever it may lead, it is the way we must go. Now... it is time, Kurosaki-sama"

Ichigo chewed on his lip for a moment before he nodded. She was right. It didn't matter where the doorway led, just that it led them to Rukia. Stepping forward, he took a deep breath before he stepped into the blackness.


	6. Deliverance From Sin

The inky darkness was the same as before. Heavy, consuming. Wrapping around him almost like a thick blanket of impermeable velvet black. No sight, no sound, no sensation at all pierced it, save for the faint glow ahead that limned Shirayuki's slight pale figure as she walked before him, long hair brushing the ground that he _knew_ was there, even though his senses were consistently screaming at him that it wasn't. The only things he _could_ feel were the nervous tightness in his chest, the cool damp of his own sweat, and the firm metal hilt of Zangetsu -- or at least, Shirayuki's fake one that she'd created for him -- where it's bandaged length was gripped tightly in sweaty fingers.

He hated this, hated the feel of this unnatural night wrapping around him, like shadowy arms winding about his limbs and dragging him down. It was too much like _then_, too much like the times he could remember losing his control, listening to that maniacally cackling voice as icy fingers wrapped bruisingly around him and pulled, weighing him down into that same darkness as the laughter increased in pitch. He didn't know what happened then, at least not in the way he knew other things. The first memory he always had after those times was the rising sensation of bile in his throat, accompanied by the knowledge that that _thing_, his dangerous otherself, had been loose, had done god-knows-what.

But this... this was different. At least with the darkness within him, he could deal with it. Drive it back and crush it down into the depths of his soul where it belonged, where it couldn't do any more harm. The darkness in Rukia's mind... was something else entirely. His control was gone, and that wasn't something he was comfortable with. Gripping the zanpakutou's hilt tighter, he furrowed his orange brow at the faintly glowing shape of the girl in front of him.

"How much longer until we actually _get_ somewhere?"

Even if he'd wanted to, it would have been nigh impossible to keep the irritation out of his voice, to keep the line of tension from showing through and betraying the strain he felt right now simply from their surroundings. As it was, he wasn't trying. Waiting for her answer, he ground his teeth against a curse as the small woman blithely ignored him, continuing on her steady pace through the darkness as though she could see just fine. Hell, maybe she _could_. It was her world, after all, so he supposed it wasn't all that far out there to assume that it wasn't dark to her. Given that this was Rukia's mind, he couldn't say he'd necessarily put it past the shinigami to have a screwed up mental world that worked on the sole basis of making _his_ life more difficult.

"We are already somewhere, Kurosaki-sama. You simply are not _looking_ properly."

Her ascerbic tone somehow managed to be even _more_ irritating when combined with the near-suffocating blackness and Ichigo felt his fist clench tighter as he bit back a suitably venemous reply. No. Arguing with the little ice queen wouldn't do him any good, and beyond that it wouldn't do _Rukia_ any good. So instead, he contented himself with cursing her in the depths of his mind -- she could read his mind, couldn't she? -- and glanced around himself with a sarcastic glare.

Was she _on_ something? Maybe those damned huge strawberries in that village before were laced with LSD or something, because he was pretty sure he _was_ "looking properly", and all the hell that he could see was dark.

"No, you are indeed _not_ looking properly, Kurosaki-sama. If you were, you would not be so worried about the ground because you would be able to see it without trouble."

This time he couldn't hold back the retort as he shifted Zangetsu's weight and increased his stride to bring him into pace with her much smaller figure, glaring down at her -- not that it mattered, she seemed unperturbed regardless of the amount of anger and intimidation he attempted to direct at her. Just the way Rukia always was.

"And just how," he snarled "would you suggest that I 'look properly'?"

Her stride didn't change, though she turned her head just enough to give him a rather frustrated look from one crimson iris before one arched white brow raised slightly at him and she continued in a flat tone.

"This is a place of the mind. Of the spirit. You yourself possess an immense level of spiritual power and fortitude, not to mention what I can only assume, despite my personal feelings, is a functional intellect. Use them."

Ichigo felt his molars grind together a bit more at her typically cryptic and somewhat insulting answer, but instead of letting that frustration explode outward -- which at this moment was what he _really_ wanted to do -- he turned it inward instead, bottling that energy and anger into a tightly focused beam. Stopping for a moment, he closed his eyes, concentrating. It seemed almost silly at first, this wasn't his world, hell he couldn't even _access_ his own power, so what made the idiot sword think that he'd be able to use his reiatsu for anything at all? Oh well, at least he'd have the satisfaction of proving the midget ice queen wrong.

Shirayuki registered the sudden cessation of his light footsteps behind her and stopped, turning to watch the young man her mistress favoured so much. Despite her _own_ doubts as to Kurosaki Ichigo's intelligence -- among other things -- at least the boy seemed to have accepted his own lack of control over this situation enough to simply listen to what his guide dictated.

She could hear the low rumbling of his thoughts, his frustrations and concerns overlaid with the skepticism that permeated his inner musing despite the way he actually paused to consider what she'd said. Turning, she watched with a slightly amused expression as the orange-headed shinigami took a deep breath before closing his eyes in concentration. Spirit though she was, she could feel the faint prickling at the back of her neck as the reiatsu -- strangely reminiscent of her mistress' -- began to concentrate. It was surprising, really, that the boy had enough power to be able to draw on it even _here_.

_Perhaps.... I misjudged you slightly, Kurosaki-sama..._

Using his own reiatsu hadn't really been at all what she'd meant, even. All she'd been attempting to impart to her companion was that perhaps he should cease with his exhaustive attempts to use his eyes in this place and simply use his brain for a change. Let himself relax so that the swirl of reiatsu that _made_ this place could do what it was meant to. But rather than doing that, he was stubbornly attempting to actually _force_ things into their place.

It would be amusing to see if he could manage it.

Ichigo wasn't aware of the fact that she'd stopped, his mind was too focused on the task at hand, at pushing away the thick and encroaching darkness that surrounded him, and fixing the elusive ground beneath his feet before the sensation that he was walking on thin air drove him mad. He didn't hear Shirayuki's sharp intake of breath, didn't see the faint glow that limned his form or feel the way that his reiatsu licked out like a flare from his person, sending shudders through whatever this place was. All that mattered to him was that after a few moments of uncomfortable stillness and void, he could _feel_ again.

Opening brown eyes, he blinked once or twice to clear his vision before casting his gaze around him. Still dark, but now at least he had the sensation that they were walking down a long, vaulted corridor, the faint impressions of walls and arched ceiling and marbled -- he assumed it was marble, it felt slick enough -- floors shining just barely through the dimmness. Glancing at Shirayuki where she stood watching him, he had the sudden sensation of being a child who's just done something they shouldn't. Which didn't make sense, she'd told him he wasn't looking right. Or maybe he was just embarrassed to admit that she'd been right the whole time and he _hadn't_ been 'looking properly'. Either way, he didn't like the way she was looking at him. Reaching up to scratch the back of his head, he shifted his gaze from her bloodred stare uncomfortably.

"....thanks."

Rather than responding, she simply raised an eyebrow in a silent appraisal of his humility -- if you could _ever_ grant that quality to such a man -- and resumed her walking. It wouldn't do to tell him how surprised she had been that he'd managed it, or the sudden shock she'd felt when she'd realized just how much potential a _boy_ like him possessed. It would only serve to swell his -- in her opinion -- already oversized head. Smoothing one hand across the patterned white brocade of her obi, she paused as they reached the end of the marbled hallway, raising her chin to look around as the space abruptly opened into a cavernous room, ceilings hung so high they could barely be seen curving from the edges of walls that stretched wide enough that the room's dimensions seemed to fade into the hazy black.

Careful steps took her to the edge of the marble where she paused, turning around to wait for Ichigo, hands clasped serenely in front of her as she watched him stride forward to stop in front of her, a confused and slightly awed expression on his face as he took in the magnitude of the chamber. It took a small feat of control not to giggle in a rather undignified manner as the young man -- staring at the ceiling and paying no attention to where he was going at all -- stepped around her and let out a yelp of surprise as his sandaled foot landed in icy cold water.

Jerking his moistened appendage back in surprise and irritation, Ichigo leveled a scowl at her. _Now_ what? They had to fucking start _swimming_?! Gritting his teeth against a growl of frustration, he made himself a mental note to have a nice chat with Rukia -- when this was all over, of course -- about how completely screwed up her head must be that there was a frickin _POND_ indoors.

Growling, he glared at Shirayuki -- she was laughing, he could tell. Even if she wasn't _actually_ laughing, he could tell that at least on the inside, that smug little face was grinning at his misfortune. Little brat. Sweeping one hand towards the huge expanse of water he could now see -- albeit barely -- stretching towards who-knew-where, he planted the other hand squarely on his waist and cocked his head to the side.

"So now what? We swim?"

Her crimson orbs narrowed slightly at the dripping sarcasm lacing his words. Really, was it entirely necessary to be so rude? It was small wonder her mistress took so much time to kick the man. Taking a breath and clasping small pale hands behind her, she stared up at him serenely before taking a single step back into the water. As her zori-clad sole touched the glassine surface of the pool, a clear tone echoed, like the faint chime of a bell through the dimmness. From the center of the concentric ripples, intricate threads of ice spread outward in a starburst of frost, hardening the surface of the water. With another, slightly deeper chime, the ice cracked as a flat, carved stone rose up to meet her foot, water freezing as it sheeted off the intricately detailed butterfly, it's curling swallowtails stretching out into the depths, small tendrils of frost still spreading outward from it's edges.

"No. We walk."

Ichigo took a half-step back in surprise as the delicately carved stepping stone rose out of the stillness of the pool, seemingly in time with Shirayuki's step. It didn't really look trustworthy to him -- 'float' and 'rock' were not generally mutual allies, not to mention he wouldn't have been surprised if it vanished as soon as she took her foot off of it -- but as she turned and began to walk, more obsidion carved butterflies lifting from their sodden hiding places, the ones she passed stayed above the water level. Hell, even the frost stayed at the edges of the stones. Swallowing past the lump -- no, he WASN'T nervous -- in his throat, he stepped forward to place his foot tentatively on the first stone. Giving it a press with his toe, he gingerly shifted his weight onto that foot, testing the black rock. When it didn't vanish, he judged it stable enough and started after her across the pool.

The stones seemed to stretch forever, the clear bell-like tones of Shirayuki's steps echoing against the water as they rose, those same tones the only sound reverberating through the dark room. Sighing, Ichigo tucked his arms behind his head in a stretch, glancing around as they walked. Whatever part of Rukia's mind this was, it was becoming one of his least favourite places. Pausing, he frowned slightly, lowering his arms as he caught sight of something in the water. A shadow, flitting past for a moment before vanishing back into the darkness.

Stepping over to the edge of the stone, he stooped down and peered into the water before recoiling in surprise, one hand reaching automatically for Zangetsu, a curse on his lips as _something_ reached up out of the water, claw-like, grabbing for him. With a startled exclamation, he pulled the blade from his shoulders, sending the glistening metal slicing easily through the up-reaching hand.

With an unearthly, watery groan that sounded half like a hollow and half like a human scream, the appendage broke apart, watery fluid splashing back down into the pool with barely a ripple to disturb the surface. Muffling another curse, Ichigo scrambled to his feet, warily looking back into the water -- at an appropriately safe distance, this time -- as formless shapes and faces glided by.

"The fuck..."

"They are the shadows of memories, Kurosaki-sama. Unless you are cautious, they will drag you down with them."

He jerked his head back towards the back of Shirayuki's head in front of him, the pendant gems on her headpiece swaying slightly with her pace as she continued walking, somehow managing to avoid getting the hem of her kimono wet despite the fact that she never lifted the heavy white cloth to move from stone to stone. Brown eyes flicked back to the twisted faces in the darkness, features distorted and stretched as though they were melting, bleeding into the water itself. Hollows... shinigami... some faces he knew, others he'd never seen before. But the most disconcerting part was the faces he recognized. Inoue, Sado, Ishida. Renji, Byakuya. Even himself, his own face in the same twisted mockery as it oozed past beneath the surface of the pool.

Supressing a shudder of revulsion, he moved faster, catching up to Shirayuki until he was one stone behind her.

"What do you mean, 'shadows of memories'?"

"They are the faces of Mistress' life. Every soul she has ever encountered, whether she actively remembers them or not. Their faces remain forever here, trapped within this pool."

Ichigo's eyes widened slightly as he took another look, watching an eerie black-haired version of himself twist it's mouth into a silent scream as it's skin shifted to a sickly greenish hue. What did she mean 'trapped'? While he certainly knew the meaning of the word, he had a hard time wrapping his mind around the idea that someone's very _soul_ could somehow become trapped inside Rukia's mind. And beyond that, if they were just memories, then why had the one tried to pull him down into their midst? Did that mean that, somehow, _he_ could get trapped here? The thought was unnerving, especially so as he tried to contemplate what the resultant effects of such a thing would be, what would happen if his soul were trapped here, wandering amidst the endless faces in the pool. Would his body keep living? Would his corporeal form continue to breathe, continue to _exist_ in the real world outside of this place? Would the flesh and bone that tied him to his own world faulter and ultimately decay, while the essence that made _him_ remained locked within her mind, a prisoner for all time? The possibilities were dizzying at best, and that didn't even take into account the sheer horror of the idea of existing like that.

"Kurosaki-sama."

Shirayuki's biting tone cut through the darker thoughts as easily as the sudden cold bite of ice in his gut cut through his attention. Biting back a curse, he staggered backwards slightly, one hand coming up to grip the razor-edged spear of frozen ice where it's sharp end was embedded in his abdomen. Gritting his teeth, he steadied himself to level an angry and betrayed look at the girl where she stood one stepping stone away, gracefully holding the other end of the spear. Staring in disbelief -- she hadn't _really_ stabbed him, had she? -- he bit his lip against the pain, watching almost mesmerized at the slow drip of crimson off of the crystalline surface of the ice as it splashed into the still pool. Yep, she'd stabbed him. The fuck was up with that?! Weren't they on the same side? Tightening his grip around the spike, he opened his mouth to ask her what the hell she was playing at, only to be cut off as she twisted the spike momentarily before red lips opened and she began to speak again, her eyes frozen chips of blood in the darkness.

"If you persist in wallowing amidst such thoughts and doubts, then you will be _useless_ to me, and to Mistress. She does not possess the time for your insignificant insecurities _or_ for your hesitation. If you truly have the will to save Mistress' life, then banish your doubts this instant. If not, then lay here and die with your fear."

With her last word, he felt the wrenching as the ice pulled free, stumbling with a sharp intake of breath as the pain suddenly gave way to a sharp tingling numbness. Looking down in shock, he pressed a hand to his stomach where he _knew_ there should be a bleeding hole. Only... there wasn't one. There wasn't even the crimson staining of the blood that he _knew_ had welled up and dripped hotly down his skin. He studied his unbloodied hand for a moment with something akin to awe before looking back at the white-haired girl standing in front of him, studying him with a look on her face that almost dared him to try something else.

Swallowing, he straightened up. No, it wouldn't do any good to try and attack her, to show her how it felt. This was _her_ world, and moreover, she was a part of Rukia. A creepy, psycho, irritating part, sure. But a part nonetheless. Scowling at her, he ran a hand through his hair before shaking his head as if to clear the thoughts from his head. Psycho-bitch though she was, she was right about one thing. And as bitter of a pill as it was to swallow, nor could he deny the truth to her words. If he wasted his time worrying about what might happen, then it wouldn't _matter_ that he was here. Rukia would die -- and probably him as well, but that mattered far less right now -- and that wasn't an outcome that he was willing to accept.

Shirayuki watched the play of emotions as they sped across his face; the shock and anger at her apparent 'betrayal', the rage and sullen acceptance of her words, and the awe and surprise as the wounds left by her attack vanished as easily as they'd come. Perhaps it was unfair of her, to bring him so close to the possibility of his death, but there wasn't time for baby steps. No time to ease him into the idea that _everything_ depended on nothing more than his will and his feelings for her mistress. Feelings that she was quickly learning were something he spent a good deal of time trying to ignore.

Well, she'd see to that problem soon enough. It didn't do anyone any good to keep those sorts of things bottled up, especially when they might prove to be just what her mistress needed. Resuming her pace, she clasped her small hands behind the elaborate bow of her obi.

"Have you told Mistress of your feelings for her, Kurosaki-sama?"

If he hadn't been paying attention to where he planted his feet -- hey, he didn't want to fall into that stuff -- her casual question would have been enough to send him sprawling into a stunned and mortified heap on the carved stone butterfly. Sputtering in a mix of embarassment and outrage, he scrambled to his feet, glaring at her in spite of the burning he could feel rising in his cheeks. Was she out of her white-haired, bug-eyed _mind_?!

"The HELL?!"

His tormentor cocked her head to one side, almost like a parakeet contemplating someone's face put to the bars, one white eyebrow raising slightly. She hadn't stuttered. Did he not understand what she'd asked? No, that wasn't the case. In this world, she could hear the harsh cacaphony of his thoughts, could read him as deeply as she so chose. It was simply a courtesy that she kept most of her 'inquiries' relegated to the surface portion of his mind, the 'public' part. The fact that she'd been able to pick up on what he was hiding so easily was simply indicative of the scope of his feelings.

"I asked you a simple question, Kurosaki-sama. Is it really so difficult to comprehend? Or do your own feelings simply frighten you far more than anything you have ever fought against?"

He ground his teeth in rage at her words, not only the sheer audacity of her question, but at her insinuation that he was too much of a coward to admit to feelings he didn't even _have_. Which was precisely what he snarled at her as his hand tightened on Zangetsu's hilt, even as he ruthlessly crushed that portion of his mind that dared to speak up, dared to try and argue the fact of the matter. It didn't matter, there wasn't a _point_ to things like that. Those things always led in one direction. Closeness. And closeness to someone only served to get you hurt when they invariably left you.

Though she listened to the angry snarl that spilled forth from his lips, her mind was turning over the jumble of frantic thoughts and feelings that seethed in his surface mind, thoughts and feelings that attempted to hide, attempted to deny themselves even as he denied his feelings to her. Sighing, she shook her head. This would prove more difficult than she'd imagined.

Any protests, along with the thoughts swirling within his brain, vanished as suddenly as his vision did in the face of a sudden, brilliant light that exploded overhead like a star, drowning the dimness of the room with it's radiance. Stifling a curse, he raised an arm to ward off the harsh illumination. Shirayuki seemed unaffected -- at least, as well as he could see with the brilliance of the light half-blinding him -- as she simply stood there as though waiting for something. He readied himself for some sort of attack, something coming from that brightness, using the illumination to shield itself, but none ever came. Instead, the painful glare faded, softening into a much more manageable level.

Ichigo blinked stinging eyes to clear his spotted vision, the haze gradually fading until he could once again make out the spread shape of the stone butterfly at his feet, it's graceful wings reaching across the water and arcing up to spread outward and overlap another, larger stone. Amber-brown eyes traveled up the staggared series of steps -- that's what they were now, steps made of overlapping stones that somehow seemed to float _above_ the water -- to the ebony-hued platform at the top. It looked oval in shape, and seemed to hover almost magically a few feet above the surface. As unnerving as the seemingly floating stepping stones had been, a huge stone platform simply hanging suspended in midair was even creepier as far as he was concerned.

Squinting slightly, he could make out figures, shadowy at first, then sharper as if the entire image was a photo being slowly turned into focus. As the cloudiness in his irises cleared, one figure stood out among the rest. Small, pale, clad in white. Eyes widening, he darted forward, taking the stone steps two at a time. He knew that shape, knew that face. It was the same face he'd seen that afternoon in Soul Society, that day when he'd landed -- thanks in part to Yoruichi's flying gizmo -- on the bridge to Senzaikyuu, those same violet eyes that had stared up at him in a mixture of disbelief, fear, and hope.

_Rukia_

Sode no Shirayuki watched as the tall orange-headed shinigami barreled past her, ruby eyes silently following as his black-garbed form hurtled up the steps. Shaking her head slightly, she continued on at her own leisurely pace up the stairs. Really, for someone who denied his own feelings as much as he did, the man could be so transparent at times. Raising a small hand, she brushed fingertips across the fabric covering her shoulder, as though to brush aside dust that wasn't there, her every motion punctuated by the same soft chiming that seemed to follow her. Kurosaki-sama was a fool, but at least she could be thankful that he was a driven fool, one who would work tirelessly to achieve the ends that coincided with Shirayuki's own wishes. But... that inherent stubbornness could easily prove to be a problem.

_He doesn't understand..... No.... he **can't** understand. This darkness within Mistress' soul has been growing for some time now. The weakness, the cracks in this world. As her strength deteriorates, so does this place. He doesn't know.... doesn't see the truth that she hides from him so well. But here... here he will see it. It will make itself known whether Mistress wishes it or not. And when it does.... she will need his strength. His strength, and the truth that **he** holds so closely. Otherwise...._

Deep crimson eyes flickered from Ichigo's receding form down to the stepping stone at her feet, taking note of the increasingly evident wear and tear to the stone, the hairline fractures that marred the ebony carvings.

_...this all may be in vain..._

The echoing clang of steel against steel drew her gaze back towards the top of the dias. Sighing slightly -- she knew what awaited them at the end of this destination, just as she suspected she knew how her companion would react -- she quickened her steps just slightly, the chiming sound of bells resounding off of the surface of the water. He wouldn't understand, and beyond that, she wasn't sure if -- even if he understood -- he'd be able to accept and handle the reality.

Her suspicions proved seemingly true as a harsh yell made itself heard over the shriek of metal. Topping the platform, she stopped and watched the scene in front of her, shaking her head faintly for a moment as the orange-topped figure of Ichigo persisted in his idiotic attempts to win a pointless fight. The shinigami was poised protectively -- as much as he could be -- in front of the small white-clad image of her Mistress, doing what he could to defend her on all fronts. It was a pointless battle, not only because for every shadowy figure that raised a blade to Rukia who was cut down by his blade there was another to take it's place, but because of Mistress herself. Or rather, she corrected herself, this portion of Mistress' soul.

The white-garbed figure of Rukia sat still as a trembling rabbit, violet eyes huge and afraid in her face, the only sounds coming from her throat a low drone of unintelligible words broken only by the soft cries of pain each time blade struck flesh, sending new rivulets of crimson sliding across skin and white silk. In front of her, within easy reach, lay the sheathed form of her zanpakutou, it's white beauty untouched by the blood, resting on a panel of black velvet on a raised red jade platform. Silent, deadly, the pendant white ribbon curled around it, the sword rested silently within her reach.

_But she will never take it up in defense of herself...._

Taking another step forward, Shirayuki couldn't help but feel a pang of guilt for not having prepared the teen for what they would find here. This was _her_ world, not his. And despite the fact that many of these places were changed from their familiar states, altered into a frightening and eerie semblance of what they once were, she still had the advantage of familiarity over him. Catching her lower lip in her teeth for a moment, she called to him quietly.

"Kurosaki-sama, stop this. There is nothing that you can do here."

He heard her words, but they only served to make him more angry as he swung the zanpakutou in a wide arc to crash into an answering blade. Shoving the shadowy figure back with a grunt and a snarl, he turned his head long enough to level a glare at the small white girl. Stop? The hell was wrong with her?! He couldn't just _stop_, just stop and let these...these _things_ attack Rukia. Not after he'd sworn he would protect her, not after he'd promised _himself_ that he'd never let anyone close to him be hurt again.

"Shut up!"

Red lips pursed as she almost flinched at the faint note of desperation, of borderline panic in his words as he attacked yet another shadow, driving back the faceless man as he turned to shout at the quivering form of her Mistress.

"Rukia! Rukia, stand up and fight! Don't just sit there, pick up the damned sword and _fight_!"

It didn't make sense, didn't make any sense at all, Rukia wasn't _like_ that, she wasn't some scared and trembling little thing who couldn't even pick up her own sword to defend herself. Hell, she'd had that damn Pyon sit on him while she took on Di Roy by herself and she'd gotten out of that without even a damned scratch. And then proceeded to berate him for thinking she'd needed his protection. _That_ was Rukia. Not this pathetic girl at his feet, cringing from blows she nonetheless refused to shield herself against, staring up with a mix of fear and hope, eyes somehow blank and unseeing, looking _through_ him without any of the usual fire that Rukia possessed, trembling as the blood from her wounds pooled and spilled off the sides of the platform into the water below. No.... it WAS the water below, but he pushed that thought aside as he shoved away another attacker, gritting his teeth as the facsimile of Rukia cried out with the pain of another wound.

"Rukia! Snap the hell out of it!"

**"Kurosaki-sama!"**

He barely had time to comprehend the sudden shift in his situation as the hard metal shape of Zangetsu melted in his hands, splashing into an insignificant puddle of water at his feet in the same breath that a thick sheet of ice ripped up from the ground, curling around into a wall -- a _cage_, really -- forcing him away from the shadows. From _Rukia_. With a roar of anger, he spun, raising a fist to try and break through her frosted prison.

"Kurosaki-sama...."

Somehow, the softer way she said his name, some note of sadness -- he thought it sounded almost sad, maybe the bitch felt bad for stabbing him earlier -- in her frigid voice struck something in him and he actually paused to turn angry amber-brown eyes on her. Biting back a curse as another of the shadows got in a hit on his shoulder, he rounded on the offending phantom in time to watch as the wall of frosted water thickened, widening and spreading up and outward into a half-dome, shielding his person from the shadowed steel. Spinning back towards Shirayuki, he spat at her in anger.

"The _fuck_ are you stopping me for?! Isn't this why I'm _here_? To save Rukia? **Then _let_ me do that!!**"

"That girl is not Kuchiki Rukia, Kurosaki-sama."

He stopped short at her words, confusion diluting the rage in his eyes as he blinked, looking in bewilderment from her to the quivering white-clad form behind him. Not.... Rukia? Blinking again, as though the action could clear some sort of fog he hadn't been aware of and make things in this screwed up place make sense again, he turned back to Shirayuki's glimmering shape where she stood sillhouetted against the blackness of the chamber, vermilion eyes almost sad as she regarded him, standing silently as the ringing echoes of steel bounced off of the thick barrier of ice.

"What.... what do you mean, not Rukia?"

His tone was measured, unsure as he studied the dark-haired girl more closely. She certainly _looked_ just like Rukia, and he honestly couldn't see how the zanpakutou's spirit had somehow come to the conclusion that it wasn't. But... she'd been right so far, no matter how much he didn't like it. Even -- and he _definitely_ didn't want to entertain this thought -- perhaps about him...

"That, like the others that we've encountered, is merely a piece of Kuchiki Rukia. A splintered fragment of Mistress' soul, wandering this place that is it's domain. It is not her, but instead a representation of one part of her."

Stepping forward gracefully, white silken kimono brushing the scattered puddles of blood with a whisper of icy wind, crackling spiderwebs of frost racing across the surface of the pools as they froze solid in her wake, Shirayuki stopped beside the quivering piece of Rukia's soul, reaching out gently to trace white fingertips down ebon hair in a comforting gesture that the other girl nonetheless shied away from. Blinking crimson irises through thick black lashes, she turned her face back towards Ichigo and continued.

"As I explained to you before, each of these 'versions' of Mistress that we find represents something, some portion of the whole. We seek not one of them, but rather the _heart_ of them all. The one piece that, above all, represents Mistress' spirit. So too is it in your own world. Many pieces, but only the one _right_ piece."

Face solemn, Ichigo nodded at her words. In some freaky, messed-up way, it made a kind of sense. Hell, he couldn't deny that the idea of many pieces making up the whole worked for him, he'd seen it happen before. Nothing, not all the training, not all the near-death experiences he'd encountered could ever make him forget the way it had felt that first time, locked within his mind's world, the sideways city in the clouds, buildings falling apart into so many boxes while he sought frantically for that _one_ box, that one piece of himself that would ultimately be his salvation from a fate he even now faced. Nodding his head towards the fragment, he raised an eyebrow in query.

"Ok, so if they're all pieces of her, then what piece is this one? You said the hollow one was darkness, right?"

Raising her head from where scarlet gaze was still trained on the girl crouched on the ground, Shirayuki continued her almost absent-minded petting of the dark head that rested slightly against her thigh.

"Not quite. What you refer to as a 'hollow', is the personified form of Mistress' inner darkness, as I explained to you before. What we encountered after that, was a symbolic representation of her reliance on rules, and the chains that she thus forms around herself by her inability to let go of those rules. This part.... represents her weakness. She is the form of Mistress' feelings of inadequacy, her sense of weakness and the helplessness that she feels. Thus, in spite of the wounds given her, and despite the nearness of the weapon _to_ her.... never will she raise it to defend herself."

He could feel the rage building, the flashfire of anger surging up within him at the thought, at her words. Rukia.... Rukia wasn't _weak_! She wasn't like that, and not because he was idiotic enough to assume that his shinigami partner didn't feel inadequacy or helplessness -- _everyone_ felt those things, even him at times -- but because in spite of that, Rukia just... Rukia was strong. Not only physically, which was in and of itself an anomaly when one considered her tiny stature, but she was strong in other ways too. Her strength was different, it wasn't the same as having the strength to pick up a boulder or swing a sword. It flowed from within her, wrapping around her and holding her up and carrying her through life. And in doing so, it carried _others_ through life. He'd watched Rukia, watched her face death numerous times, and the moments when he'd seen the flash of fear or despair in her eyes had been few enough that he could number them on one hand. Even in the face of hardship, the petite shinigami was like a pillar of stone, a lighthouse amidst stormy seas, somehow managing to keep shining in spite of the deluge that was life.

That fact was one of the things that made Rukia _Rukia_. It was one of the things he noticed, one of the things he admired, one of the things he... Frowning, he turned the thought over in his head, cursing the white-haired girl's earlier words, her earlier poking at his emotions and his thoughts. It wasn't fair, wasn't fair of her to stir up things he'd long-since decided were pointless to think about, pointless because they wouldn't serve any purpose other than to complicate his already-complicated life beyond what he knew how to deal with. He didn't _know_ \-- ok, so technically he knew, though the denial and determination NOT to know was sometimes stronger -- how he felt, and it was frustrating enough to deal with _that_ without the red-eyed midget nibbling at it all the damned time.

"Tch, tch.... don't you think it's a little unfair of you, Little Rabbit? Hiding the truth from the poor boy with shadows and riddles. How cold of you."

The voice echoed through the chamber like the hissing of a snake, shifting and rebounding with the same eerie doubleness he heard whenever Hirako or one of the other Vaizard put on their mask, the same way _his_ voice changed when the smooth porcelain bone slid into place and his vision darkened with the shadowy look of the hollow. Spinning, he was somewhat startled to see Sode no Shirayuki spin likewise, flaxen white hair whirling with the long sleeves of her kimono, errant strands spilling around the pendant jewels of her headpiece like fringed tassels. She seemed equally as disturbed as he was when her sanguine gaze came to rest on the lone figure across the dias from them.

Actually, to say that the girl was across the dias from them wasn't entirely accurate. Rather, her small feet, clad in glistening black zori with hanao the colour of fresh-spilled blood, rested at the apex of a sparkling spray of what looked to Ichigo's eyes to be crystallized blood, fountaining up from the still pool below in a magnificance of sharp-edged and frosted beauty. In appearance, her physical nature was the negative of the white-clad form of Sode no Shirayuki. The same black iron headpiece with it's pendant rubies, though the silken strands drawn up into it's clips were the same midnight ebony as the blood-splattered brocade of the silken kimono she wore, the long tails of her black obi tipped with red fringe where Shirayuki's was pure snowy white. In place of the decorative pearlescent cording, this girl's clothing was trimmed in either ebon black or the deepest red. But it was her face that was truly horrifying, at least in Ichigo's opinion.

That same eerie, childlike visage as the pale-skinned girl to his left, but rather than spheres of deepest crimson resting against the white silken gloss of her skin, what stared back at him were eyes he recognized. Glowing yellow-gold set against unearthly black sclera. A Hollow's eyes, his suspicions only furthered by the tip of a blue tongue as it slid out to wet blood-hued lips.

He knew, without a doubt, that _this_ was the source of everything, the taint that the Hollow had somehow left in Rukia's mind. That it chose to take a perverted form of the shinigami's own zanpakutou only served to cement the thought in his mind as he crouched inside Shirayuki's ice prison, one hand reaching for the blade on his back only to realize with a curse that the girl hadn't reforged the weapon that _she_ had melted. Shirayuki herself still stood in stunned -- or perhaps furious -- silence, her eyes chips of frosted crimson as she glared at the interloper.

"This is not your place, _hollow_. You do not belong here, and we will see to it that your stay comes to an end."

Ignoring her icy words, the black-haired girl turned her unnatural golden eyes towards Ichigo and laughed, a high-pitched, chilling sound made all the more unsettling by the eerie double-voicedness of it's timbre. Running a finger through raven tresses, she again licked her lips with her blue tongue.

"You should know better, Little Rabbit. He deserves to know, don't you think? You can't hide the truth behind shadows forever."

With a flourish of her hand, the dias was lit with a brilliant glow, the shadowy figures attacking himself and Shirayuki thrown into sharp contrast as the formless gray of them melted away to reveal all-too familiar faces. With a cry of startlement, Ichigo spun around, brown eyes wide as Byakuya, Renji, some black-haired man who looked enough like him that it was creepy, as well as other friends and comrades raised bloodied swords, looks of blankness on their angry faces. But the most frightening of all was the figure of himself, eyes blacked in madness, the white slivers of bone encroaching over his face as the unmasked half grinned in sadistic glee, Tensa Zangetsu wielded in bloodied fingers.

Shrinking back in horror, he protested, stepping back unsteadily towards the edge of the dias, shaking his head. No. It wasn't true, it _couldn't_ be true. Byakuya, Renji.... they'd never attack Rukia, not like this. And he.... he'd never hurt her, never lay a hand on her, but it was the hollow, the _hollow_ attacking her now.

"No! That's not true, that's _bullshit_!"

She laughed then, not the creepy childish giggle, but the harsh grating sound of a Hollow, throwing her head back and laughing in maniacal glee. Locking her two-toned gaze on the pair for another moment, the grin faded off of her face, transforming into a malevolent sneer as the dias itself began to rumble, cracks appearing along the edges, running rapidly towards the center, beneath their feet. Ichigo barely heard Shirayuki's cry of warning before the structure of the dias gave out, thick chunks of black stone falling into the water below with loud splashes, overshadowed by the sudden roaring as the shaking spread to the entire room. In a matter of moments, they were falling, spinning in a downward spiral into blackness, the ever-deafening laughter of the Hollow drowning out all sound.


	7. Mercy From Heaven

The darkness seemed to permeate, to worm it’s scintillating way into every facet of his mind, the only thing keeping him from madness being an odd sort of whispering that echoed off of the figurative walls of his subconscious. The whispering -- if it could be called that -- drew at him, pulling and prodding at the fringes of his consciousness in an ever-increasing pitch and volume. It raised, lowered, and undulated with sound, as a new voice added it’s notes, followed by another, until the faint murmurings seemed almost deafening and he felt the urge to cover ears he didn’t have with hands that he also didn’t possess.

Recoiling from the internal noise, Ichigo fought the overwhelming throng, heaving a mental sigh of relief as the edge of consciousness broke over him with a wash of golden light, sweeping away the tormenting voices as he hesitantly cracked open amber-hued eyes. The torrent of light and colour assaulted his vision and with a groan, he rolled over on his side as he blinked back tears at the sudden onslaught.

_Someone get the number of that truck...?_

He expected that ice-tinged voice to break into his musings as she always tended to, reading his thoughts as though she owned them and finding some sarcastic quip to add. Shirayuki, he was convinced, got some sort of sadistic pleasure from his discomfort, given the way the zanpakutou spirit’s red-painted lips always seemed drawn in some sort of little half-laughing smirk whenever he did something stupid. Only... this time it didn’t come. There was no haughty, superior-acting zanpakutou spirit waiting to mock him for his frail human sensibilities and the audacity of actually NOT knowing everything that was going to happen and _did_ happen in this world, as the little girl seemed to like to pretend. He knew it was pretend because he knew that knowing the future was just so much bullshit, even if you were a spirit.

Pushing himself slowly to his hands and knees, he shook dust from orange hair, spitting out the dirt that had somehow managed to get into his -- Pausing, he blinked down at the packed brown earth beneath his hands. Dirt? But they’d been in that water-filled room, the vaulted antechamber that had seemed more like some sort of temple than anything, with it’s carved butterfly-shaped stepping stones and that red-rimmed dias at the top. They’d been at the top, but then...

Sitting back, he rubbed his aching head, trying to put the pieces of his own thoughts together into some semblance of order and sense. That was right, they’d been in that creepy place with the faces in the water, faces that had looked like _him_, that had tried to grab him and drag him down with them, and then that... that _thing_ had shown up, and..

With a muffled curse, he was on his feet immediately, one hand reaching for Zangetsu as amber-brown eyes scanned the surroundings for any sign of the black-washed version of Shirayuki with it’s mocking Hollow’s face. Instead of the Hollow, or even the now-familiar surroundings of the dim, watery chamber, he found himself staring into a familiar sight; the streets of Rukongai, what he vaguely recognized as Inuzuri, where Rukia had once told him she’d grown up. The dusty ground, the shabby buildings and tenements, knotted cords strung from window to window, hung with washing in various colours, most of it faded and frayed at the edges. It was like opening a door and walking back into Soul Society. And with Rukia missing, it was eerily reminiscent of the last time he’d had to search for her there, when the two Hollow children had nearly destroyed Soul Society in their attempt to turn back time and keep her with them forever.

But the thing that seemed the most unsettling, the thing that had him the most on-edge, was the complete lack of any signs of life here. Like the snow-crusted village they had first encountered, this facsimile of Inuzuri seemed deserted, abandoned. A light breeze blew sporadically, the only sound the faint flapping of coloured scraps of cloth as the laundry caught and translated the breeze into a fanciful play of colour. Ichigo shuddered slightly -- the village had been creepy enough, at least THERE he didn’t know there were _supposed_ to be people wandering around -- as he took a few steps forward, his senses searching for any sign of life. Or for Shirayuki, for that matter, as there had been no sign of the white-garbed little girl spirit since he’d woken up.

_Great... now I’m **stuck** here and my guide somehow decided it’d be a great time to go wandering off somewhere._

Raising a hand to rake it through mussed orange hair, he spun as he caught the faintest flicker of motion at the fringes of his perception. Narrowing his eyes, it took him a moment to spot the small figure crouched in the shadows of one of the buildings, studying him with huge violet eyes as she sat on her haunches like a small rabbit. Though, he had to admit it was fitting, seeing as the little girl’s head was adorned with what could only be a pair of long white ears, twitching slightly with the breeze, pale blue flowered kimono offset by the dinginess of the world around her. With a start, he recognized her as the little girl from earlier, the child-version of Rukia who had appeared to them at the start of their journey.

Dropping his hand from his head, he strode over towards her, only to scowl slightly as she darted away from him like a frightened animal, ducking behind the edge of the building to peer out at him. Scratching his head, he sighed. He wasn’t really good at this kind of thing, kids always thought he had a scary face.

“Hey.... you don’t have to run away. I’m not gonna hurt you.”

She drew back further, eyes still locked on him.

“Hey... say something. You got a name or something? Come on, I need your help since your grouchy big sister’s vanished.”

Frowning, he made a grab for the child, who scampered around him with a small bleat of fear, pressing herself into the narrow corridor of an alleyway he couldn’t get into.

“I am not grouchy, Kurosaki-sama. And you are wasting your time. She will neither come to you nor speak to you.”

Spinning around, he found the familiar figure of Sode no Shirayuki standing there, white garments somehow untouched by the dirt and dust of this portion of Rukia’s mind. His subconscious pointed out that it had been that way wherever they’d gone, the white-garbed little girl’s kimono -- not to mention her long, trailing hair -- always neat and pristine, unsullied by anything around them, be it water, dirt, or even blood. Must have had something to do with the fact that she was a part of Rukia or something like that. Scowling, he gestured to the cringing figure of the little rabbit-girl who slipped out of the crack in the wall and skipped further down the road to stop in the center, a small figure standing there almost as if waiting for them.

“So then what the hell am I supposed to do? You said she was a piece we’re looking for, right?”

Shirayuki nodded, the pendant gems on her headdress dancing with her motion. Casting ruby gaze towards the girl, she watched as the small child stiffened slightly, her expression changing fractionally as she responded to the silent command. Satisfied on some level, she turned gracefully towards Ichigo, chin raised in her normal haughty countenance.

“She is the Keeper of Memories, Kurosaki-sama. Perhaps the most important piece, though not truly the one that we seek. She is the holder of Mistress’ heart, and the guardian of all the things she holds dear within it. Of all of us, she knows Kuchiki Rukia’s heart and mind the best, as she is the small core of innocence and purity within us all, that portion of our hearts and minds in which we secrete our most cherished wishes. This place...”

She gestured with a sweeping motion to the battered buildings and structures around them, the sleeve of her kimono sweeping in a wide arc as she did so.

“... is her domain. We are visitors here, and we should remember it as so. While she will not harm us in any way, do not forget that this world is comprised of memories. Memories can hurt. They can kill, if the need should arise. And they can reveal many things about ourselves that we would choose to keep hidden. Do not forget that this is Mistress’ heart. There will be things here that you shall see that are not meant for your eyes. Do not sully that with your own selfishness.”

He growled under his breath slightly, scowl deepening.

“Ok, I get it. So what the hell do we do, then? You said she won’t talk to us, and we can’t catch her, so what do we DO?”

The zanpakutou spirit regarded him with a level stare for a moment. Really, he was such a stubborn man, and so caught up in himself that he obviously took leave of the simple things such as logic.

“We follow her, of course.”

With that, she summarily dismissed him, turning towards the little girl with a nod. Ichigo bit his tongue against the angry retort -- would it kill her to NOT do that crap where she acted so high and mighty? Growling slightly, he closed the distance between them to stand behind her petite figure.

“Ok, let’s go.”

Shirayuki turned red eyes up to him as her form wavered, seeming almost to destabilize like a hologram turning to static.

“In this place it is difficult for me to maintain myself in a form such as you are accustomed to. I cannot follow, though I will be nearby should you need me.”

At that, her form faded, splashing down into a gush of chill water that froze into a star-burst of crystal as it hit the ground. Ichigo jumped back in startled surprise -- doing this alone wasn’t something he’d really counted on, especially when he had no clue exactly what he was supposed to be doing. His scowl deepened as he shook the remnants of frosted water from his hakama, looking up to where the small form with it’s rabbit ears stood waiting a scant 30 yards ahead. Well, at least _she_ was still there.

Without hardly a warning, the little girl stiffened, her head shooting up like a rabbit who had just caught wind of a dog, ears pricked and erect. Her eyes widened fractionally and then she was off in a blur of pastel cotton and the faint sound of bare feet striking the packed, dusty ground. With a curse, Ichigo took off after her, As they ran, he could hear Shirayuki’s voice whispering into his mind as they rounded corners and crashed through alleyways.

_Kurosaki-sama... be careful. Every passage that we travel through in this place will potentially take us into another portion of Mistress’ memories. Her thoughts. There will be things you will see, things you will be privy to, that you can neither influence, or change. You _must_ understand this. While it seems innocuous... this is a dangerous stretch of our journey. Mistress, like anyone else, has demons in her past, darkness hidden in the recesses of her mind. There is a chance that we may encounter some of these, simply as observers, and you cannot lose sight of our true purpose._

He shook his head, as if by doing so he could somehow dislodge the voice the way one would dislodge a clinging veil of lace -- ironically enough, he’d just done that with some of the laundry they’d blundered into -- and snapped at her. 

“Ok, I get it, now shut up and let me concentrate on following her!”

Focusing his attention back on the running form of the little girl, he scrambled through a narrow alleyway, only to stumble into... somewhere else. Staggering slightly as he nearly slammed right into several people, Ichigo blinked in startlement, looking around. This place... looked like Inuzuri, it _was_ Inuzuri.... but it was the Inuzuri he remembered, packed with wandering souls as they milled about, some seemingly in a daze and others just going about daily lives. He absently made to step around people, muttering a ‘sorry’ here and there when he bumped into them, but none of them seemed to even notice his presence in their world.

_Must be one of those memories that she was talking about._

It was... eerie, to be honest. Things looked the same, and yet... they didn’t. The sun was in a different place than it had been just a few moments ago, but beyond that, even the colours of everything were different. Muted, almost as though seen through a filter, their colours bleeding faintly together at the edges. As he pondered what portion of Rukia’s memories this could be, his attention was drawn by a familiar-sounding voice as it shouted. Spinning around from side to side, he looked for the source of the shout, childish and young though the voice was. He _knew_ that voice, would know it even in his sleep.

Shoving people halfway aside, he was soon rewarded by the sight of a group of children who came barreling through the crowd, dodging around legs and kicks, purloined jugs of water clutched in dirty little hands as they ran from a rather large man waving a club. As they dashed past him, Ichigo felt his eyes widen in startlement as he recognized one of them, unruly mop of crimson hair tied up into the same ponytail that it always was, dark brows drawn together over brown eyes, face absent of the tattoos that he was used to seeing.

“That’s.... Renji? Then that means...”

Searching through the crowd, he scanned the figures of the other children, looking for a small one with black hair, confused when his quick search yielded no results.

_But I thought Rukia said she and Renji grew up together...._

Ichigo’s attention was once more drawn to the cluster of children -- or more accurately, to the man with the club -- as a lavender-hued bullet darted into the mix, small foot outstretched to knock the man’s feet out from under him, young face pinched into a look that he knew well. Despite their current situation, and the true gravity of his presence here, it was hard not to crack a wry chuckle at seeing a young Rukia acting so, well... Rukia-like. She was still bossy, still an annoying brat as she stood up and demanded to know what the hell the others thought they were doing just standing there and gawking while the water-seller was getting back to his feet. And then they were gone, darting past him as though he wasn’t even there, and suddenly he noticed another black-haired figure trailing them, white ears pulled back against her head as she ran.

“Crap!”

They were just kids, it wasn’t that hard to keep up with them, but they had a head start and beyond that, they knew this ground. And while he’d been to Inuzuri once before, that by no means meant that he’d memorized the layout of the sprawling district. Cursing under his breath as he crashed through a doorway, the people around him strangely unconcerned when their environs changed and shifted to accommodate his presence, he tore a grimy and faded door hanging from his face and continued after the 6 small figures.

_Kurosaki-sama... there is no need to rush so. She will not leave you behind for long, should you fall behind her pace. Remember that any damage you cause in this world is damage to Mistress’ soul herself. That includes such mundane things as doors and walls._

“And if I don’t do all of this in time, then Rukia dies, right? I think that’s a bit more important!”

Whether Shirayuki agreed with him or not, her voice in the back of his mind fell silent as he ran, noting with a passing interest that the thick urbanity of the district was falling away, the houses -- if you could call them that -- spreading out as things became more rural. His lungs were aching, muscles protesting loudly by the time they reached their destination. Pressing palm to a nearby tree, he watched as the cluster of children ducked under a fence and scuttled like little beetles into the windows and doorways of a rather sizable -- for being a shack -- house that looked as though it was ready to fall apart if too strong of a breeze blew against it’s timbers. As he watched, a small face topped by long white ears poked itself out of one of the windows. dark eyes finding his and holding his gaze for a long moment before she withdrew into the house again. He shrugged, muttering under his breath.

“I guess that means ‘follow me’....”

Checking almost instinctively for the familiar weight of Zangetsu against his back -- not that this was even the _real_ Zangetsu to begin with -- the orange-haired shinigami made his way over towards the shack, eyeing it with some degree of trepidation. Not only did it look as though it were about to fall apart if he breathed on it a bit too hard, but nearly all of the holes and windows that qualified as ‘doorways’ were the proper size for small, scrawny children. Not for a larger frame like his. There _was_ a doorway, covered with a somewhat ragged hanging of blue -- or what had once been blue -- cloth, a shabby wooden panel leaning against the wall beside it, what he could only assume was a shutter designed to keep out the cold at night. He headed towards the doorway, then hesitated. Simply walking into someone else’s home uninvited wasn’t really polite, and while he could have cared less for that, neither did he really want to be set-upon by half a dozen children if they mistook him for someone who would harm them.

_Have you forgotten, Kurosaki-sama? In this world, none will be aware of your presence, save she who guides us and myself. Do not waste time on petty concerns such as this._

“Ok, I get it, I get it! Quit lecturing, you’re as bad as Rukia.”

He got the faintest sense of surprised amusement from the crackling voice in the back of his mind, still fighting the urge to shiver at the whisper-touch of her presence. He’d never liked the idea of someone else in his head, it was too reminiscent of the Hollow, how it felt to have that sinister other-self, that secondary consciousness twittering in the back of his mind during times when he should have been at peace with himself. And while the Hollow was a malevolent force and Shirayuki was not, the mere fact of her presence there gave him the same vague crawly sense, as though he had walked through an invisible spiderweb that he couldn’t seem to peel off of himself.

Reaching out, he hooked fingers around the worn linen hanging, surprised for a moment at how thick the fabric actually was, and pulled it aside, ducking his head to step into the one-room dwelling. Well... it wasn’t _exactly_ one room. Looking around, he had a hard time not feeling a tad bit impressed at the ingenuity of small children. Here and there, they had rigged up wooden boxes and empty crates, leveling planks of wood across them to make a sort of catwalk of lofts and shelves. Here and there he could see the flash of colour from blankets and curtains that partitioned the room into a visual cacophony of individual sleeping areas. Thick ropes hung here and there, either tying together pieces that didn’t seem entirely stable, or serving as a quick means down from some of the higher platforms.

_Wow.... this would have been a fantastic play-fort when I was a kid...._

_Perhaps a pastime for another time, Kurosaki-sama._

Shirayuki’s dry wit echoed through his thoughts and he scowled in response. He wasn’t hurting anything by looking, and hadn’t she said nothing he did here would be noticed by the individuals who made up this world? His thought must have reached her -- not surprising, it seemed all the other ones he came up with did -- because she responded with an equally unamused comment that such being the case, there was still not time for him to dawdle amidst his own childhood reminiscences. 

Glancing up at a commotion, he watched as one of the older kids took something from a much smaller boy, holding the purloined item -- candy, he could see some of the star-shaped pieces fall out of the ripped bag as the older boy held it aloft -- and proceeded to mock the child, declaring that he didn’t need it, as none of them had enough spiritual power to need to eat. Growling to himself, he began to take a step in spite of the fact that they couldn’t see him. It wasn’t right, to take something from a child that way.

Before he even had a chance, Rukia was there, knocking the older boy down and pinning him in place, small frame straddling his chest as she scolded him, reminding him that they were all the same, that small pleasures and enjoyments belonged to all of them, not only to a priviledged few.   
As Ichigo watched, startled and -- he’d never have admitted it to Rukia -- impressed, the young girl in the purple flowered kimono knelt down in front of the small boy, patting his head before giving him her own portion of the treasured sweets. Ichigo found his eyes following her slight figure as she ducked out of the doorway, and before he even knew what had happened, he was following, watching as she hopped up into a tree, legs swinging idly as she watched the setting sun.

It was so strange to see Rukia this way, the Rukia he’d always thought he knew so well. It wasn’t that she was so different, because... really, she wasn’t. But seeing her like this, seeing that noble, proud carriage even amidst a world like this.... was like shining a different light onto a portrait he’d only ever viewed from one direction. He’d always assumed that the way she held herself, the way she treated others... that they were things she’d learned being part of the noble Kuchiki clan. That they were bits and pieces of the training that anyone in a noble family received in regards to how they were ‘supposed’ to act and treat others.

_Mistress was not always as you know her, Kurosaki-sama. You seem surprised, though I know that you are familiar with that fact. So why does it strike you as so strange that she behaved as she does not out of training, but out of innate nature?_

He... honestly didn’t know, and he said as much with a shrug and an unconscious mental response as he stood there, hardly conscious of the other children ducking out of the door around him, seeming to avoid crashing into him by some unknown method, even though they weren’t aware of his presence.

_Come, Kurosaki-sama... it’s time to leave this place and continue on..._

Nodding, even as his eyes remained trained on the figure of a young Rukia in the tree, watching as the slightly taller figure of Renji came out of the house and addressed her. It was strange, but... he wanted to keep watching, to keep observing as she turned her head to remark to the redhead, smiling and nodding.

_I’ve.... never seen her smile like that..._

The thought bit at him, more than it should have, but he forced himself to turn away, to where the twin figure with the rabbit ears stood on the small path, seemingly awaiting him. Sighing, he regarded her with a somewhat irritated glare, to which she responded by twitching one ear before taking off at a run again. Ichigo cursed under his breath and followed, the laughter of the children and the house with the blue door fading slowly into the background.

The pathway widened, then narrowed again, and he dodged around a wall that hadn’t been there before, as their surroundings changed again, reverting back to a different part of Inuzuri, a portion that seemed even more familiar to him. Skidding to a stop, he stood in the center of the packed-dirt road, frowning. This.... this was....

_Rukia!_

Spinning around, he cast his eyes about for something he’d only heard about from her words, and even those words had been vague and somewhat avoidant; a reminder of a past she didn’t like to talk about, a past that had brought pain. Amber eyes narrowed as he darted through the streets, seeking the edge of the urban zone, mind racing.

_No.... this isn’t right. I know this place, but.... she said once...._

Panting, he skidded to a stop as he caught sight of a flash of lighter colour, squinting to make out the two small forms darting through the legs of the crowd, one head topped by unruly platinum hair, holding the hand of a smaller child.

_There!_

Ignoring Shirayuki’s voice as it began to speak in the back of his head, he followed his instincts, following the two small children as they made their way up a hill and around a bend. As he ran, the ominous roll of thunder split the air as the skies opened up and it began to pour. Ignoring the drenching rain, he kept going, following the children only to stop and hang back as they ducked into an old building. As the tattered tatami door slammed shut, Ichigo stepped out from under the shelter of what had once been an old shed. Now it was little more than a few upright timbers and a measly patch of roof that did little to keep the rain off of his head. Narrowing his eyes, he studied the structure in front of him. It wasn’t imposing, but it was likely that in it’s life the building had served some important purpose. His history teachers would have likely called it a castle, with it’s wide-spanning porch and multitude of tatami doors, each likely leading into it’s own room. In a way, it reminded him of a much more run-down version of the Kuchiki estate.

Heedless of the driving rain, he made his way across the expanse of sparse grass and pebbles that served as a yard, nodding to himself when another small figure detached itself from the fabric of the landscape and slipped into one of the doorways. Even though she wasn’t physically there, and was hitch-hiking a ride in his brain, he couldn’t resist cocking his head towards where she’d gone, as if to address Shirayuki with a ‘see? I DID know what I was doing.’

_Perhaps you did. Or perhaps you are simply lucky._

Her response to his unspoken quip was icy and abrupt, before she resumed her silent parasitism of his subconscious. It was probably a bad idea, but he allowed himself the slightest smirk at her expense.

Shirayuki, for her part, was too proud to admit that she’d been surprised when the boy had deviated from the path, ignoring the trail that the Keeper was leaving for him and running off like some lunatic into the midst of Rukongai. Kurosaki didn’t know this place, he’d never been here more than twice and she knew for a fact that her mistress had never taken the young man to this particular location from her past. And yet... he’d somehow instinctively known where they were, what they were seeking. He’d found the children, and he’d followed them. It could easily be argued away as simple luck and little more, but.... some portion of her was reluctant to do so. Perhaps because if it were no more than luck... then this venture would only prove to end in tragedy. She _needed_ it to be more than luck.

Slipping into the old ruin was easier than it would have been otherwise, in part because this time he remembered that none of them could see or hear him and that there was little reason for subtlety and secrecy. If they couldn’t see him, then it meant he didn’t have to sneak around and try to find a way to do this silently. The room was dimly lit, but it carried the sound of childish giggles and Rukia’s soft voice as she chided them, ruffling their wet hair with a spare cloth and scolding them for coming back drenched. In the faint light lit by the crack of lightning across the sky, he watched an older Rukia kneel in front of them, promising to give them names. Seeing the way they squealed and danced around, he felt the corner of his mouth quirk up slightly.

“I guess I never thought about it... how many kids die in the world. And they come here... and get reborn... and there’s no one to take care of them. No one... to even give them names.”

It was a sobering thought, and one that made him clench his fist in anger as the injustice of it all. He could almost feel Shirayuki nod in the back of his mind, her cold fingertips whispering against his shoulders as though she rode on his back the way Rukia often did, speaking softly into his ear.

_It is the lot that many in this place share, Mistress among them. Had she not been cared for in her youth by Hisana-sama... then she would have been one of these nameless children, growing up in a place where everyone scrapes for survival, and those who care for any beyond themselves are few and far between. It is for that reason, that Mistress strove so hard to give them lives worth the living._

Watching as the two children danced around, finally tackling Rukia in a hug that she lovingly returned, he nodded simply to the spirit. This... was a pain he couldn’t share; that of not having a name. In truth... he’d always complained somewhat about his lot in life, until Rukia had shown up and showed him that what he’d always thought was more irritation than anything... could be a force for protecting those he cared about. And watching as she gave the two their names, he couldn’t help but feel that he was far from being the only one whose life she’d touched thusly.

He watched for another few minutes until he felt a slight tug at his hakama, glancing down in time to see the rabbit-eared child dart away from him with a beckoning look before slipping out the window. Sparing one last glance for the tender scene in the dimness, he followed her out into the rain... only to find himself on a grassy pathway, leading up a hill. Pausing in confusion, he couldn’t shake a sudden and inexplicable sense of wrongness, a sense of....

_Hollow!_

Glancing around his hand went to Zangetsu’s hilt as he pulled the gleaming blade from his back, dropping into a ready stance as he cast about with his senses, trying to pinpoint it’s location. Shirayuki’s voice whispered up from his mind, a tone of sadness tinging her words.

_Kurosaki-sama.... this will be one of those times I spoke of. These happenings... they are in the past, and as such, they cannot be altered or changed. The things that happened, and the things that will happen along our journey... we are merely observers. They are pieces of Mistress’ past, pieces that have shaped her into the woman that you know. Not every piece is formed with joy. There are those formed with sorrow, with despair... and with loss._

He ignored her words as a scream split the air, followed by another, the childish treble and soprano mixing together into a melody of terror as the Hollow’s reiatsu flared again. Breaking into a run, the shinigami headed for the end of the path, the top of the hill, where he knew it was, knew that he needed to go. He could hear the screams, the frightened cries of the children for Rukia, and even as fast as he ran he somehow knew he’d be too late. His periphery registered a flash of colour, as a smaller figure in a wine-red patterned kimono darted past him, bare feet flashing against the ground as she ran, answering her charges’ call. Topping the hill, he arrived just in time to see the Hollow-possessed shinigami lifting Rukia into the air, his meaty hand tight around her throat as she choked and clawed to break his grip, the tip of the red scythe at the end of it’s tail glowing as it began to wipe away her memories.

And then it was over, as the little girl made a valiant effort, picking up the asauchi and stabbing the Hollow in the leg. Ichigo bit his lip, teeth clenched in rage as the man slaughtered both children, the little brother trying to protect his sister at the last. Forcing his legs to move, he stopped numbly beside Rukia’s unconscious form, watching as the bloodied forms of the two children glowed and vanished, his mind automatically supplying the information that Urahara had shared when the truth had come to light.

_Now.... they’re in Hueco Mundo.... with the Hollow...._

Tightening his fist, he gritted his teeth in anger, hardly noticing anything until the rabbit girl’s small hand tugged at his.

_This.... this shouldn’t have happened!_

_Those words can be said of many things, Kurosaki-sama, in many lifetimes. Would you wish every sadness, every tragedy in your life away, that you would not have learned to become strong?_

He wanted to punch her, if she’d been there... he might have. But even then he couldn’t deny that her words were true. Sadness and hardship in life.... only made one stronger. Kneeling beside Rukia’s prone form, he reached out, then paused. She couldn’t feel him... right? It wasn’t as though he could make any difference, but even still his hand lowered, brushing black hair from her forehead as he whispered.

“... You’ll see them again, Rukia.....”

Stepping back, he watched for what seemed like an eternity until she stirred, sitting up and pressing a palm to her forehead in confusion as she looked around. For just a moment, she seemed to look for something in particular, only to shake her head as though to chide herself before pushing herself to her feet and staring off over the horizon. Hearing footsteps behind him, Ichigo turned and glanced over his shoulder to see an older Renji approaching, concern on his face. Stepping aside out of some unconscious deference, he watched as the two paused to stare at the setting sun before turning together and making their way back down the path. The rabbit-eared child followed at a surprisingly reasonable pace as they made their way along other paths and streets and up to another hill, this one overlooking the river, and beyond that... Seireitei. Cresting the ridge, Ichigo’s eyes moved from the trio of small wooden crosses to Rukia’s sillhouette against the glowing sun and suddenly he knew.

_This is where...._

“Renji.... let’s become shinigami. If we become shinigami... we can live in the Seireitei. It’s a better life there.....”

Watching the resolve on her face, the hope in her eyes, Ichigo pushed back an unexpected lump in his throat. He always knew that being a shinigami meant the world to Rukia. It was who she was, _what_ she was... how she defined herself. He even knew the choice she’d made, that it hadn’t been an easy one, but now standing here, seeing it firsthand, there was a new sense of respect for the gravity of it, for what it had taken to make such a decision. A new sense of understanding for the resolve Rukia -- and to a degree Renji -- must have possessed to climb to where they were from so little. He could almost follow her words with his own lips, as he watched her face harden with determination as Renji nodded and the silent pact was made between them. A pact to find a better life. Dropping his eyes down to the small girl who was now clinging to his hakama, he raised an eyebrow, sighing slightly as she cringed back from his expession.

“All right..... now what?”

She twitched her nose in a very bunny-like way before giving another tug to his hakama and darting off down the street, disappearing between the alleyways in a patter of footsteps. Growling in frustration -- couldn’t she just pick a speed and stick with it? -- Ichigo took off without a second look back.


End file.
